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INSPIRATION 


INSPIRATION 

A Study of Divine Influence and 
Authority in the Holy Scriptures 


By 

NOLAN R. BEST 

Editor of The Continent 



» > 





l 


New York Chicago 

Fleming H. Revell Company 

London and Edinburgh 



Copyright, 1923, by 
FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY 




©Cl A711248 

New York: 158 Fifth Avenue 
Chicago: 17 North Wabash Ave. 
London: 21 Paternoster Square 
Edinburgh: 75 Princes Street 

JUL19 '23 


i 


Dedicated 

With Devoted Filial Affection 

to 

MRS. CYRUS H. McCORMICK, Senior. 
















Preface 

D ISCUSSION between conservative and 
progressive theologians reveals one dif¬ 
ference in viewpoint which accounts for 
all their other differences. Briefly it may be said 
that the inspiration of the Bible is the single central 
issue on which they are at odds. But even that 
statement of it would exaggerate the breadth of 
their actual dissension. That the Bible is inspired 
by divine wisdom for the religious edification of 
mankind both would instantly consent. What the 
effect is of that inspiration on the quality of the 
Bible is the much narrower question on which 
alone evangelical opinion differs radically. If at 
this point some measure of common understanding 
could be had in Protestant churches, unseemly con¬ 
tention would almost cease to mar their peace. 

The heat of feeling excited by controversy over 
the inspiration of the Scriptures is, however, not 
difficult to explain. To understand it one needs 
but to bear in mind how fundamentally Protestant 
Christianity has reposed its reliance on the written 
word of God. To multitudes of the devout it is 
literally terrifying to hear respecting the Bible the 
least suggestion of shifting interpretation. If the 
Bible is not a “ constant ” in the problem of life, 
what can be rested on? 

The question is a natural one and naturally most 

7 


8 


PREFACE 


poignant where the scholarly studies that produce 
so many new theories concerning the Scriptures 
are least understood. Criticism which in the 
schools seems commonplace and incidental is likely 
to appear in the eyes of the average man who lives 
by the Bible a direct assault on his spiritual se¬ 
curity. Almost invariably he attributes to it a 
destructive influence which those with whom it 
originated would think ludicrous. None the less 
it is unchristianly cruel to scorn the alarms which 
such persons feel; rather a brotherly consideration 
should be alert to assure them of a loyalty as 
earnest as their own toward Jesus the Christ. 

In the last analysis it is only men committed 
mind and soul to the paramount fact that “ the Son 
of Man hath authority on earth to forgive sins,” 
who are competent or entitled to interpret the gos¬ 
pel revelation on either old presumptions or new. 
On the other hand, the gospel revelation can never 
be in peril of being distorted by true and passionate 
lovers of a saving Christ, whether their premises of 
interpretation are new or old. On this spiritual 
certainty may all Bible-lovers rest. There is 
naught to fear even from those who deal in 
novelties of Bible exegesis as long as in their lives 
may be discerned the “ fruits of the Spirit.” It 
is the highest Name which underwrites the uni¬ 
versal law of religion: “A good tree cannot bring 
forth evil fruit.” 


New York ... 


N. R. B. 


Contents 


I. 

The Voice of God . 


II 

II. 

The Agency of the Spirit 


18 

III. 

The Materials of Revelation 


.. 2 7 

IV. 

The Providence of the Canon 


35 ~ 

V. 

The Compilation of the Book 


42 

VI. 

The Truth of the Message 


50 

VII. 

The Bible’s Human Element . 


59 

VIII. 

The Mirage of Inerrancy 


68 

IX. 

Education and Symbolism 


8i 

X. 

The Multiplexity of Doctrine 


96 

XI. 

The Employment of Reason 


113 

XII. 

Miracles in the Bible 


130 

XIII. 

Liberalism Within Orthodoxy 


145 


Appendix. 


159 


9 



( 


I 

THE VOICE OF GOD 


A N inquiry into the nature of Biblical in¬ 
spiration can be of interest only to those 
whose philosophy of things human and 
divine does not exclude the conception of God 
communicating His thoughts to the mind of man. 
A thinker who has convinced himself that no hu¬ 
man intellect could receive or transmit the direct 
impressions of a divine Intelligence, can scarcely 
be engaged by a study of how the Bible expresses 
the mind of God. His only answer can be that a 
book humanly produced expresses human minds 
and nothing more. 

With as many, however, as have not tied up 
the possibilities of the universe into so small a 
parcel of their own opinion, the mere supposition 
of a volume conveying to mankind a message of 
supernatural origin should suffice to rouse a con¬ 
cern to know its credentials and appraise the ex¬ 
tent of divine influence exercised through it. And 
the more profoundly any reader is persuaded of 
the reality of such claims for the Scriptures of the 
Old and New Testament, the more earnestly eager 
should he be to value precisely the worths imparted 
to these writings by the impress of divinity upon 
them. Assuredly a man who has come to rever- 


ii 


12 


THE VOICE OP GOD 


ence the Bible as a—or let us rather say, the— 
book of God, will be equally anxious neither by 
fanatic superstition to load it with significances 
that God never intended, nor by critical skepticism 
to rob it of any meaning with which the infinite 
Wisdom purposed to invest it. 

The effort here begun to outline such an ap¬ 
praisement of the qualities of Holy Scripture pro¬ 
ceeds then on the frank assumption that a revela¬ 
tion of the will of the universal Creator to His 
human creatures is not only a possibility through 
the medium of a book penned wholly by human 
hands, but in the volume of the Bible has become 
an actuality. The assumption is of course a pre¬ 
mise of faith rather than a conclusion of logic. 
Even if occasion permitted the matter to be 
argued, argument would never demonstrate it. 
The ways of God like the being of God transcend 
syllogisms. 

Nevertheless logic need take no offense at the 
premise of divine revelation. Many considerations 
commend the idea to a reasonable philosophy— 
considerations drawn from the common experi¬ 
ence of the race and especially from the historic ex¬ 
perience of Christians. Most patent of the facts 
that sustain it is the Bible itself. Saying this is not 
begging the question. A Bible “ of the earth 
earthy ” would indeed be, no matter what its own 
claims in its own behalf, poor testimony to the 
reality of truth’s communication from heaven. 
But the Bible that we have has long since im¬ 
pressed the world with a character to which it is 


THE VOICE OF GOD 13 

far from absurd to attach the thesis of a heavenly 
derivation. 

To be sure, for those whose inclinations turn 
that way it is easy to single out from the Scrip¬ 
tures—especially from their primitive portions— 
illustrations of crudities unmistakably human, for 
the origin of which no half-way candid reader 
would look higher than a this-world plane. But 
whoever is willing to do the Bible the justice of 
judging it in whole and not in part, must confess 
that in its loftier portions it soars to elevations of 
sublimity well worthy of an ultimate authorship 
in the mind of God. As the Westminster Con¬ 
fession of Faith says so finely, it is “ the heavenli- 
ness of the matter ” which the Bible contains that 
justifies regarding it as a heavenly product. 

There is, of course, no compulsion on any man's 
judgment to admit this divine authorship if he 
chooses to deny it. It is open to him to maintain 
that the noblest of Bible passages reflect nothing 
but the genius of men. In that case, however, he 
will be constrained to speak of amazing Bible men 
whose feet have “ climbed the steep ascent of 
heaven ” to a more convincing apprehension of 
who God is and how He loves than the greatest 
of sages elsewhere have attained. But one who 
says God helped them to the truth, has no need to 
speak of a remarkable God. If God indeed had 
a hand in the making of the Bible, its most glit¬ 
tering peaks are not loftier than a rational expecta¬ 
tion of Omniscience, looking upward, may sur¬ 
vey without surprise. 


14 


THE VOICE OF GOD 


The awesome drama of Job, where God Him¬ 
self appears as an actor; the glorious hymns of 
faith and praise which the psalmists sang; the 
thrilling oratory of impassioned prophets denounc¬ 
ing evil with voices of thunder and illuminating 
righteousness with the lure of unquenchable light; 
above all the “ meek and lowly ” voice of Jesus 
Christ, unfolding, with ineffable gentleness but a 
strangely commanding power, the way of that 
mystic life which eschews self and inherits eternal 
joy—these things, if from man and only from 
man, are wonders for which history and criticism 
have yet to account. But if one says they are from 
God, all is accounted for the instant the word is 
spoken. 

But the greater—yes, the greatest—argument 
for the authentic revealment of the Creator 
among and to His creatures is afforded not by a 
book but by a Life—a Life recorded indeed in a 
book but so vitally distinct from all that is written 
of it that still after twice a thousand years it con¬ 
tinues to dominate the mind of the world with the 
independent force of embodied fact. Nothing was 
more distinctively characteristic of the Son of 
Man than His consciousness that the Father who 
sent Him was always with Him and through Him 
was manifest to the men who were His own daily 
companions. Of those companions it was later 
said that those who watched them “ took knowl¬ 
edge of them that they had been with Jesus.” 
Even so mankind, watching the figure of their 
great Friend and heeding His words, has taken 


THE VOICE OF GOD 15 

knowledge that He had been—has been—is—with 
God. 

Without reference to theological conceptions of 
His Personality, it is impressively obvious that 
Jesus Christ’s mighty and constant sense of God 
stands, for the modern man as for the original 
disciples, as the best of all pledges that the Soul 
of the Infinite does seek converse with the finite 
souls of this small planet, otherwise isolate in the 
ocean of space. In so far as Jesus was God, He /p ( 
was the demonstration that God craves fellowship < 
with man. In so far as He was man, He was the 
demonstration that God can have fellowship with 
man and man with God. In either aspect the 
literal feasibility of divine revelation, guiding hu¬ 
man thought, directing human action, is sustained 
by one wholly congruous example. And plainly 
what has been lived and felt may also be told and 
written. After Jesus a Bible is no longer a 
miracle. God manifest in the flesh renders God 
manifest in a volume of writing a simple and 
minor sequence. 

With full confidence therefore in the rationality 
of the idea of “ Scripture inspired of God,” these 
studies base themselves on the single broad belief 
that the Lord of heaven and earth has “ of old 
time spoken unto the fathers by the prophets in 
divers portions and in divers manners,” and of 
those messages, as well as from that still nobler 
message “ spoken unto us in His Son,” has pro¬ 
vided an authoritative and permanent record be¬ 
queathed to later generations that “ through com- 


16 


THE VOICE OF GOD 


fort of the Scriptures we might have hope.” This, 
as already said, is a frankly confessed assumption 
—an unproved (but fitly believed) postulate from 
which inquiry sets out; for no inquiry makes 
progress except it has first determined what things 
it will leave behind unquestioned. Whoever there¬ 
fore cannot consent that so much shall be held to 
be fixed and free of doubt, had best not go on by 
this road. Let him turn back and have out his 
own wrestle with first principles. 

But grant that we are satisfied to accept the 
presumption of an actual revelation from God in 
a book certified by His providence and divinely 
adapted to instruct mankind in the changeless 
things of His purpose and will. Then we are 
ready to advance to the practical examination of 
that book, asking what are the seals and tokens 
of this august authorship which it has pleased the 
Lord to stamp upon it. By “divers manners,” 
says the apostle, God has accomplished this trans¬ 
mission of His thoughts to the minds of men. 
What more fascinating pursuit can a studious 
brain propose to itself than the investigation of 
the particular manners which God has chosen to 
employ in making the Bible—discerning, if pos¬ 
sible, by what standards of discrimination He has 
preferred one “ manner ” for one passage and 
some other “ manner ” for another of its “ divers 
portions ” ? 

Before entering, however, upon the highway of 
this attractive study it is necessary to post at the 
outset one warning sign. We have made one as- 


THE VOICE OF GOD 


17 


sumption; let that in this direction be our end of 
both assuming and presuming. Not a philosophic 
riddle to be solved by hypotheses and presupposi¬ 
tions lies before us, but a tangible phenomenon of 
literature, as challenging to scientific determina¬ 
tion of fact as the firmament of sun and stars 
overhead. Not what the Bible might be, nor even 
what (in our opinion) it ought to be, is the object 
of our just interest; we desire to know simply 
and only what the Bible is. Too long, by both 
those who would magnify and those who would 
disparage the significance of inspiration, has te¬ 
dious theorizing been indulged over what God 
must do or could not do if He undertook to in¬ 
spire a book of permanent religious authority for 
His children on earth. For such vain disputation 
there is but one terminus, and that is the common 
willingness of all concerned to quiet their own 
clamour and look in the Bible to see what in fact 
God has done. 


II 


THE AGENCY OF THE SPIRIT 

t 

A N inspired Bible must depend on the reality; 
of personal spiritual contact between men 
and God. But so, too, according to 
evangelical faith, does the daily Christian life of 
the simplest of private disciples. Each means ac¬ 
tual divine-human intercommunication. If God 
does not in very truth impart energy, illumination, 
guidance, to individual human souls in this world, 
then indeed we have no book of divine authority, 
but by the same token there are no lives directed 
by heavenly impulse to the service of Christ. And 
it can only be by the same Holy Spirit that the 
divine impacts are transmitted which accomplish 
both these purposes. It is not one Spirit who 
speaks messages for prophets to repeat to vast 
national multitudes and another Spirit who speaks 
counsel for the private Christian to apply to his 
own personal perplexities. It is in each case the 
same Voice. But is it the same sort of speech? 

“ There are,” says Paul, “ diversities of work¬ 
ings, but the same God who worketh all things in 
all.” How wide is the diversity here ? When God 
in a now far antiquity inspired twoscore men (or 
thereabouts) to write what He has since collected 
into the canon of Holy Scripture, did He exert 

18 


THE AGENCY OF THE SPIRIT 


19 


over them some mystic influence brought into play 
upon humanity neither before nor since? Or did 
He but enter those minds by the same silent chan¬ 
nels through which He still daily responds to sup¬ 
pliants for the wisdom which, James declares, He 
gives with limitless liberality to all men who care 
to request it? Was it by some forcible seizure of 
their mental powers that these authors of the Bible 
writings were compelled to pen what God desired ? 
Or were the promptings which guided them the 
same character of unspoken urge within the soul 
by which devout men still in this prosaic day are 
sure that the heavenly Father affords leading in 
religious duty ? What, in a word, is the essential 
quality of Bible inspiration? And how distinctive 
is it, as compared with other guiding influences 
by which the heavenly Father in every age teaches 
each child of His the path of His pleasure? 

On this problem, which seems so central to the 
question which these studies have undertaken to 
pursue, it is surprising to find how little help the 
Bible itself affords. One finds that the writers of 
Scripture were not at all disposed to analyze their 
own psychology. Perhaps it is fair to say that the 
Hebrew race, to which they belonged, never did 
develop that form of self-consciousness. At all 
events, not one Bible writer furnishes the least clue 
to let us know how it felt to be writing under 
God’s inspiration works sacred to later ages. 

A few are rather explicit about the visions and 
theophanies whereby matter for their messages 
was made known to them—John in the Revelation 


20 


THE AGENCY OF THE SPIRIT 


is especially notable for this—but not even these 
suggest anything other than the normal action of 
the human mind in the memory which retained 
these communications for record or even in the 
habits of verbal composition which gave to them 
literary form. The prophets who begin nearly 
every paragraph with “ Thus saith Jehovah ” but 
seldom relate by what means—sound for the outer 
ear or impression on the inward thought—they 
heard Jehovah’s sayings. And for much the 
greater part of the contents of the Bible it may be 
taken as certain that the authors came by the facts 
and thoughts of their writings in a manner not 
consciously different from the production of any 
other literature of similar sincerity. Scripture 
historians questioned eye-witnesses or consulted 
documents; poets and psalmists wrote as the surge 
of life experience within them drove them to 
write; the apostles sent letters to the churches for 
just the same reason that men write letters to¬ 
day—they had something urgent to say to their 
friends. 

It appears accurate to add that no author rep¬ 
resented in the Biblical canon had any conception, 
as he wrote, that he was contributing to a book of 
permanent divine revelation for all mankind. To 
that thought the nearest approach must have been 
realized by Moses and those who worked with 
him or after him on the “ book of the law ” for 
the Israelitish nation. They, of course, had no 
idea of reaching beyond the circle of their own 
people, but as patriots they no doubt anticipated 


THE AGENCY OF THE SPIRIT 


21 


an endless national force for the statutes they were 
recording. Is it cynical to observe the historic 
irony of the fact that the only portion of the Bible 
which the twentieth century finds obsolete is the 
Eevitical code, which to these ancient Hebrews 
seemed perpetual? 

For the rest of the Scriptures it seems true with¬ 
out qualification that its various books were com¬ 
mitted to writing under as immediate an urgency 
as a modern preacher preaches a sermon or a 
modern compiler might undertake to preserve the 
records of the late war. Each such writing was in 
its own way a tract for the times. And the 
Biblical authors were preeminently men of con¬ 
temporary minds intent on serving their own re¬ 
spective generations. 

To that end they wrote, as the case might de¬ 
mand of each according to his special talent, 
memoirs of a heroic or a shameful national past 
to inspire or restrain the people’s current tempers; 
burning exhortations to waken conscience for liv¬ 
ing sins and responsibility for living duties; songs 
of hope in dark or light to cheer the hearts of 
spiritual pilgrims; dawn-bright foretellings of sal¬ 
vation and refreshment destined in God’s mes¬ 
sianic plans yet to reward the discouraged and 
weary; loving transcripts of those words which 
were spoken as man never spake, so that those 
who never saw Jesus none the less might remem¬ 
ber Him; and simplest of all, friendly letters hur¬ 
riedly penned to carry to one and another group 
of beloved fellow Christians such quick warning 


22 THE AGENCY OF THE SPIEIT 

and instant instruction as they were thought to be 
at the moment in need of. There are the ma¬ 
terials—each serving the passing day but each in¬ 
stinct with a seed of perpetuity that their original 
penmen never guessed—which remain to consti¬ 
tute the invaluable treasure of the Holy Bible. 

If in qualification of these remarks any saying 
of Scripture could be cited, it would no doubt be 
out of the first chapter of Peter’s first epistle, 
where, having voiced the early Christian’s pas¬ 
sionate love of the recently ascended Lord, the 
apostle harks back to the messianic prophecies 
which foretold a Saviour’s coming: 

“ Concerning which salvation the prophets sought 
and searched diligently, who prophesied of the grace 
that should come to you, searching what time or what 
manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was in 
them did point unto, when it testified beforehand the 
sufferings of Christ and the glories that should fol¬ 
low them. To whom it was revealed that not unto 
themselves but unto you did they minister these 
things.” 

It must appear plain, however, on study that 
these words do not contradict but confirm the 
generalization that Bible writers wrote for their 
times and not with the object or hope of helping 
to create a perpetual religious literature. The al¬ 
lusion of Peter does not, of course, extend beyond 
those passages in the Old Testament that foretell 
the appearance of a Messiah among the Jews— 
passages of the highest significance yet small in 
extent as compared with the whole bulk of that 


THE AGENCY OF THE SPIRIT 


23 


Testament. Not even these prophecies, however, 
are by Peter’s affirmation classed as conscious con¬ 
tributions to a permanent Bible. 

Indeed, the implication is quite the opposite. 
Peter rather signifies that the Spirit of God 
prompted the prophets to speak and write, for the 
encouragement of their own contemporaries, the 
blessed message which promised the world a 
Saviour, but to their disappointment forbade them 
to anticipate an early fulfillment of the promise. 
They had thus to leave to the future what they 
would have been joyful to welcome in their own 
day, and the predictions which they recorded for 
their own neighbours stood to be the comfort also 
of other long generations intervening before the 
fullness of time had arrived. The prophets, there¬ 
fore, may have dreamed of their prophecies sur¬ 
viving till the divine One did appear, but that does 
not say that they had knowledge or even intima¬ 
tion of a destiny that was to make their writings 
imperishable till the end of time. 

Yet, if totally unaware of any afflatus that 
lifted them to the plane of timeless oracles, these 
Scriptural authors were intensely conscious, as al¬ 
most every page of their manuscript shows, of 
that other fellowship with the Spirit of God which 
is the covenant privilege of every devout soul. 
The long destiny of their writings they had no 
way of foreseeing, but they fully appreciated the 
imminent importance of making a mighty mark 
for God in the generation alive at the hour when 
each man wrote. And .well they knew that such 


24 


THE AGENCY OF THE SPIRIT 


a service is to be accomplished by no merely hu¬ 
man cleverness or adroit literary device. They 
hoped to speak and write for God not by might 
nor by power but only by the aid and guidance of 
His Spirit. Just as a true minister of the word 
of God in this day makes first preparation for his 
sermon by prayer and meditative invitation of 
divine influences, so the prophets of old com¬ 
muned with God long and with even agonizing 
desire before they dared utter in His name their 
“ Thus saith.” 

Of course, it must not be assumed that the 
modes of experience by which Bible writers were 
admitted to participate in the mind of God were 
never different from the modes of experience 
which are common to men of to-day. No one with 
any due conception of what omnipotence signifies 
would dare the effrontery of setting limits to the 
means by which God may work out His purposes. 
In a time when the instrumentalities through 
which God could reveal His will were fewer, and 
perhaps the spiritual apprehension of the race cul¬ 
tivated to a far less degree of sensitiveness than 
now, it may well have been that means of com¬ 
munication more objective than He uses to-day, 
were necessary. And if necessary the infinite God 
would not be hampered in His resources. 

There are many references to visions and 
dreams, in the older Testament especially, to which 
current religious experience affords no parallel. 
But lack of that kind of verification for divine 
messages now is no disproof of the reality of it 


THE AGENCY OF THE SPIRIT 


25 


then. Nevertheless, even in the prophetic books 
the impression is strong- that the men who spoke 
for God of old time heard the word of their proc¬ 
lamation oftenest in the prayerful silence of their 
own souls—just where the evangelical church to¬ 
day expects its preachers to receive the Spirit’s 
sanction for the substance of their preaching. 

It is noticeable that Paul frankly declared that 
what he heard when caught up to the third heaven 
was not usable for any earthly ministry. What 
method of revelation brought him (succeeding his 
conversion vision) the gospel he did preach— 
which he always insisted was transmitted to him 
without human intermediation—he nowhere has 
hinted. But those delightfully naive passages in 
the seventh chapter of First Corinthians (where 
the apostle acknowledges that he has “ no com¬ 
mandment of the Lord ” and so must “ give my 
judgment,” in which, he adds, “ I think I also 
have the Spirit of God”) carry the very ring of 
voice which would seem natural to a present-day 
evangelist—absolute assurance on the great things 
of God, but on matters of minor importance a 
hope rather than a surety of keeping in line with 
God’s mind. Is it presumptuous then to imagine 
that Paul’s certainties developed from experiences 
altogether similar to those through which many 
a lesser Christian has won his way to great tri¬ 
umphs of faith? What did that long stay in 
Arabia signify? Battles no doubt, such as hosts 
of souls have had to fight, struggling through 
floods of questionings to the solid rock of mighty 


26 


THE AGENCY OF THE SPIRIT 


affirmations, of which his epistles have become aa 
undying witness to edify a living Church. 

There seems then to be discoverable no defined 
line of difference by which to distinguish the oper¬ 
ation of the Spirit in the mind and soul of a Bible- 
writer from the same Spirit’s guidance and gov¬ 
erning of an average Christian’s life along lines 
of average duty. The most positive conclusion to 
record on the subject is a negative one—there is 
absolutely no faintest shadow in Scripture of the 
widespread pagan notion that God could speak 
only through a mind robbed of normal faculties. 
The Bible sets utterly no store on the mantic rav¬ 
ings out of which the Greeks thought they could 
gather divine oracles. 

The true God got His Bible written, as He gets 
all His other works in the world done, by men 
using for Him all the gifts and capacities with 
which He endowed them. The Holy Spirit has 
no preference for low-grade mental tools. It is a 
far greater thing to know that He is capable of 
using the keenest of tools appropriately for His 
several intents. If by no external test is it possible 
to say how the inspiration of a book differs from 
the inspiration of a life, yet the fact that for dif¬ 
ferent purposes the Spirit inspires both is sufficient 
assurance that in each case the purpose is ade¬ 
quately accomplished. Each case is the deed of a 
perfect Wisdom. The matter rests in the satisfy¬ 
ing deduction that the Bible which God has made 
is every whit the Bible man needs. 


Ill 

THE MATERIALS OP REVELATION 


N O exact distinction, it has just been said, 
can be defined by the human observer 
between the movements of the Holy 
Spirit anciently in the minds of Bible authors and 
the movements of the same Spirit to-day in the 
souls of common Christians. Yet a vast differ¬ 
ence in effect is apparent. No Bible is developing 
in the twentieth century. Hosts of men, the 
Church believes, continue to this day to speak and 
write in the power of the Spirit. But neither from 
their speech nor from their writing does there any¬ 
where arise an authority comparable for a mo¬ 
ment to the sway—the universal sway, we may 
well say—of those ancient Scriptures which after 
the lapse of millenniums remain dominant over the 
moral world. What accounts for such singular 
and unfading supremacy? If it is indeed true 
that no external phenomenon of authorship dis¬ 
tinguishes the Bible from other books, how does it 
come nevertheless to be so potently different? 

A process of selection tacitly attesting the 
Bible’s contents is evident on the face of things. 
The works included (unless exactness requires 
that an exception be made for the two books by 
Luke, the Greek physician) are wholly the product 

27 


28 THE MATERIALS OF REVELATION 

t 

of a single race, but by no means the whole litera¬ 
ture of that race. The earliest Biblical records 
mention other Hebraic writings seemingly in their 
day more famous and, it would appear, quite as 
devoutly religious, which despite that missed the 
immortality of a place in the Scriptures. The re¬ 
pudiation of the Old Testament apocrypha by the 
best scholars of primitive Christianity excluded 
from the Bible sphere another large body of He¬ 
brew thought by no means devoid of historical, 
intellectual and spiritual merits. As for psalms 
it cannot be supposed that a people so ready in the 
praises of God sang no more than a hundred and 
fifty of these hymns of the soul in all the centuries 
of their national life. Solomon alone is recorded 
to have written more songs and spoken more prov¬ 
erbs than the whole Bible contains. 

The books of Kings and Chronicles confess 
themselves abridgments of more copious histories 
extant in their epoch. Numerous prophets who 
appear dimly in the background of the Old Testa¬ 
ment scene must in many cases have written down 
for their contemporaries the truth from God as 
they heard it, but failed to win the preservation 
of their words to later generations. On the other 
hand, much apocalyptic literature, such as in a 
later period of Jewish history became the favourite 
vehicle of “ popular preaching/’ was cherished 
and handed down along lines of pious descent for 
a great while before the canon of our existing 
Bible was closed, yet found neither part nor lot in 
that sublime monument of the Hebrew mind. 


THE MATERIALS OF REVELATION 29 


The same sort of selective sifting is further 
manifest through the New Testament within the 
scope of purely Christian literature. The intro¬ 
duction to Luke’s Gospel in particular illuminates 
this fact. The “ beloved physician ” who came to 
Jerusalem with Paul and chose to remain in Judea 
as long as his great friend was imprisoned there, 
was impressed not with the scarcity but with the 
multiplicity of written memoirs of Jesus, then be¬ 
ing handed about in manuscript among Jewish 
Christians. Not a few but “ many ” had “ taken 
in hand ” to tell that wonderful story of the Son 
of God who became Son of Man. And there is no 
trace of conscious superiority over that multitude 
in the quiet phrase, “ It seemed good to me also,” 
by which Luke explained his resolve to include 
himself in the loyal and reverent group of such 
biographers. 

Could the evangelist have had—as he certainly 
did not have—a miraculous prevision of the New 
Testament now possessed by the Christian Church, 
he would doubtless have been amazed to behold 
but four gospels surviving to subsequent ages of 
religion. And perhaps he would have been still 
more surprised to see his own story of Jesus sup¬ 
planting all but two—more likely, all but one— 
of the numerous manuscripts in circulation when 
he sat down to write. For surely in Luke’s modest 
commendation of his work to Theophilus there is 
no suggestion of a conceit proposing to do better 
a task bungled before, but only of a humble joy in 
being permitted to try his skill also at a task rich in 


30 THE MATERIALS OF REVELATION 


privilege to any disciple who loved the memory 
of the gentle Nazarene. 

Much the same that is thus said of Luke might 
be said of his still more gifted mentor, instructor 
and example, the mighty Apostle Paul. For Paul 
too was a humble man and must have had, if pos¬ 
sible, less imagination than Luke of bequeathing 
anything of his writing to be a standard of doc¬ 
trine for all succeeding Christendom. As has been 
already observed, he used his pen not for obtain¬ 
ing to himself the dateless fame which has become 
his meed from history, but for the intensely prac¬ 
tical and right-at-hand necessity of setting his fel¬ 
low believers right where they had missed some 
of the meaning of Christianity. 

The apostle, of course, was aware that the pleas¬ 
ure of God had long contemplated a supreme book 
bestowed on men for their religious guidance. He 
well knew that book as it existed in his day and 
revered it as containing “ sacred writings ” able 
to make men “ wise unto salvation/' He was 
happy that his spiritual son Timothy had known 
those writings from infancy; doubtless his own 
knowledge of the same book went back also to 
young childhood, and he would have no child grow 
up without its divine counsel. And quite possibly 
Paul realized that for all God’s purposes the Holy 
Scriptures would still require a supplement— 
something to explain better how the salvation fore¬ 
cast in the law and the prophets of the old Jewish 
Bible was now to be realized “ through faith which 
is in Christ Jesus.” 


THE MATERIALS OF REVELATION 31 


But that thirteen of his own letters would go 
into that new supplement on “ salvation,”—this, 
it is surely safe to say, absorbed and self-forgetful 
Paul never dreamed of. More to the point here, 
however—since this unanticipated immortalization 
for writers of Scripture has already been dwelt 
upon—is the probably greater puzzle in the mind 
of the apostle if he had attempted to account for 
the fact that only thirteen were used. Why these 
and no more? Without doubt these thirteen con¬ 
stituted but a portion—very likely a minor portion 
—of the correspondence he had penned through 
all his long missionary career, with “ anxiety for 
all the churches pressing on him daily.” 

Paul was a born letter-writer and he could not 
long have worried over any of these far-away 
circles of disciples without reaching for pen and 
parchment or stylus and tablet. No doubt he dis¬ 
patched to distant friends many an epistle which 
the recipients carelessly failed to preserve. In 
fact, from his own allusions (1 Corinthians 5:9; 
2 Corinthians 2: 4) we know the apostle sent one, 
and very likely two, letters to the church of Cor¬ 
inth which that church appears not to have prized 
enough to keep. By these lost epistles may be il¬ 
lustrated one of the crucial questions involved in 
this inquiry. 

Considering that all this correspondence with 
the Corinthians ran in a single connected series, 
dealing with various ramifications of one problem, 
is it conceivable that Paul could have written the 
surviving and the lost epistles under a differing 


32 THE MATERIALS OF REVELATION 


spell of divine impulse? If Dr. David Smiths in¬ 
terpretation is correct, it is the second and the 
fourth of these letters which stand now as integral 
parts of God’s authoritative Bible, acknowledged 
as inspired by all evangelical scholars. The first 
and the third are those which have disappeared. 
But who in such a case would be willing to say 
that the Spirit who watches over all the churches 
descended to the apostle with a divine inspiration 
only after his first (now lost) epistle to the Co¬ 
rinthians was penned and temporarily withdrew 
once more after the second (called in the New 
Testament the First) had been finished. 

An apostle with the problem of the unruly Co¬ 
rinthian congregation on his hands was in no situa¬ 
tion to be content with intermittent flashes of di¬ 
vine illumination. He continually needed all the 
godly wisdom—all the protection against error in 
judgment or instruction—which the divine Spirit 
could in any case impart to an earthly servant of 
God’s truth. It certainly could not have been more 
important to insure right regulation and true or¬ 
thodoxy for an American church in the twentieth 
century through the medium of an inspired book 
than it was to get a straight start for an infant 
congregation in the initial age of Christianity 
through the oversight and agency of a living 
apostle. Can it be too bold then to say that the 
Lord did not give the Spirit in stinted measure to 
Paul at any time, whether he was writing to the 
Corinthians his first, second, third or fourth letter 
of counsel—that the lost writing was just as fully 


THE MATERIALS OF REVELATION 33 


inspired as that which we read in this day when 
we open the Bible to First and Second Corin¬ 
thians? 

If we affirm, however, that the inspiration of 
God may (or even must) have been as “ plenary ” 
for much of His word that never got within the 
covers of Holy Scriptures as it is for the historic¬ 
ally accepted contents of that volume, let us make 
sure that we are grading up the oral and transient 
utterances of God’s messengers and not grading 
down the values of the permanent record. Not 
otherwise will we be in harmony with the experi¬ 
ence of prophets, psalmists, evangelists and 
apostles. For to none of these great heralds of 
God was it ever a commonplace and incidental 
matter to have the Spirit with them for any of the 
ministries which they rendered in God’s name. 
All the wonder that they could possibly have given 
to the thought of heavenly Wisdom permeating a 
book of revelation for mankind they daily felt in 
themselves as they realized the equal miracle of 
God cooperating with them in their work—em¬ 
ploying them in His work. 

This exalted estimation of a divine immanence 
in common life which we modern Christians are 
apt to dismiss as unimportant—if not wholly 
mystical and theoretic—is accounted for in these 
ancients by the much higher value than our usual 
insight supports which they put on the daily busi¬ 
ness of serving God. That was to them colossal 
business, and required all the power possibly to be 
obtained for it from the reservoir of Omnipo- 


34 THE MATERIALS OF REVELATION 


fence. So men still should think. If a preacher 
really understands what a divine duty it is to 
preach a weekly gospel sermon and make it count 
for men’s salvation, he will scarcely believe it a 
greater—though it may very well be a different— 
power which one would need to write a Bible. 

He who gives over therefore the attempt to 
describe and distinguish the exact potential of di¬ 
vine dynamic requisite to inspire a competent book 
of revelation, is in no wise consenting to evaporate 
the book’s authority. He may be refusing to 
measure how much of God is in the book, for he 
may have learned by exploration of the greatness 
of God how futile (if not foolish) it is for the 
human philosopher to mark bounds for the com¬ 
ing and going of the Eternal Spirit. But as long 
as one says, “ God is in the book,” he has said 
what is all sufficient, for he has said that enough 
of God is there. 

Enough of God is there to insure that the di¬ 
verse contents assembled from many sources to 
constitute the holy volume have been drawn to¬ 
gether by the magnetism of an infallible Intelli¬ 
gence. It is not an aimless or formless conglomer¬ 
ate. Out of materials vaster than could possibly 
have been incorporated into any single Bible for 
human use, God in His own time by His own se¬ 
lection of appropriate elements has made a Bible 
as it has pleased Him. Its power unimpaired 
through the rolling centuries is the adequate dem¬ 
onstration of the rightness of His choice and the 
perfection of His work. 


IV 


THE PROVIDENCE OF THE CANON 

" F it is appreciated that in the very times when 
the Holy Scriptures were taking form, the 
JL inspiration of God pervaded utterances and 
documents far more numerous than a volume of 
the usable size of the Bible could preserve, there 
is introduced into the study of inspiration a factor 
not commonly considered. Superabundance of 
materials at hand for any kind of construction al¬ 
ways compels selection. This is as true in the mak¬ 
ing of a book as in the building of a house. When 
therefore God was compiling a book for men, His 
first necessity (to speak after a human manner) 
was to choose, from the plentiful mass of what 
He had taught His trusted servants to think, speak 
and write, such portions as were in their nature 
most suitable to the purposes which that book was 
to fulfill. 

Contemplating this process of selection, the 
reader of the Bible which resulted from it can 
scarcely fail to feel the double sanction of divine 
authority conveyed thereby. On this view the 
contents found within the volume are not only 
what God originally wrought out through human 
minds governed by His Spirit but what by His 

35 



36 THE PROVIDENCE OF THE CANON 


own specific choice He later marked as ageless in 
value and fit therefore to constitute the permanent 
guide-book of mankind. This makes the Bible 
like a great deed of trust, which on its face con¬ 
veys a property of inestimable worth and after¬ 
ward is indorsed with a sworn and bonded guar¬ 
antee of title from the grantor Himself. 

A distinct change of emphasis, however, must 
ensue where this thought of a Bible compiled out 
of a much larger inspired literature supplants the 
perhaps more prevalent thought of a Bible planned 
and composed as a unique religious unity under 
influences that have affected no other writing of 
men. By the latter conception the matter to be 
mainly insisted on as establishing the authority 
of the Scriptures is the Lord’s direct appointment 
of each Biblical author to pen the particular por¬ 
tion of the Bible which it became his lot to com¬ 
pose. With this goes of course the belief that in 
a way altogether unparallelled by any human ex¬ 
perience elsewhere the Holy Spirit presided over 
the mind of each writer until he had finished the 
stint of authorship assigned him. 

From so exclusive a stress, however, on sixty- 
six separate miracles of supernatural control 
wrought for the production of the Bible’s sixty- 
six documents, there often results a strange indif¬ 
ference to the means by which those sixty-six 
documents were at length assembled in the single 
book which to-day standardizes the faith and the¬ 
ology of Christendom. Men who are vehement 
champions of the plenary inspiration of each in- 


THE PKOVIDENCE OF THE CANON 37 


dividual segment of Scripture, not infrequently 
indulge in slighting remarks about the ecclesi¬ 
astical powers that shaped and finally closed the 
Biblical canon. Sometimes there are heard al¬ 
most sneering references to the few votes, one way 
or the other, by which it is supposed in the councils 
of the ancient Church this or that book was put 
into or shut out of the Bible. The impression sug¬ 
gested is that the Spirit took the divinest pains to 
procure the writing of the various fractions of the 
Bible but left to chance their preservation and the 
canonical collection of them—that the parts of 
Scripture are inspired but their association in a 
single volume came to pass by some guideless ac¬ 
cident. 

All this appears to be a complete inversion of 
the logical values of the case. It is the Bible as a 
whole, as an intact book unified by its one ever 
controlling interest in the relations of God and 
man, which bulks on the sight of the world as the 
most potent phenomenon of universal literature. 
It is the mass impact of the volume which makes 
humanity bow to the moral authority of its teach¬ 
ings. It is not by its fragments but in its integral 
wholeness that it sways the mind of Christendom. 
The concentration of the Bible’s sections and por¬ 
tions into a single harmonized unit of power is 
therefore a greater work than the first production 
of the various materials thus combined. Is it pos¬ 
sible then that the Spirit of God would give an 
omniscient attention to what was less and leave to 
neglect what was more ? 


38 THE PROVIDENCE OP THE CANON 


It has been already insisted in these studies that 
the Spirit’s agency in the original composition of 
the Scriptural writings was actual and valid. But 
there is no inconsistency with that faith in adding 
now that the Spirit’s agency in forming the canon 
—in binding up the completed book into one 
volume—was a still more unqualified intervention 
of the governing purposes of God. Moreover, it 
was an act of much more immediate consequence 
in attesting to mankind the supernatural reality of 
Biblical revelation. 

That God’s book should be commended to the 
trust and faith of humanity by His ratifying 
choice of the matter to be incorporated therein, is 
an idea much easier to make real to the twentieth- 
century mind than any thought of a Bible writer’s 
intellect being preempted by a temporary divine 
Occupant. This is, of course, but little reason for 
maintaining that the former idea is truer than the 
latter. But it is good reason for setting the former 
fact to the forefront when one is inviting the 
modern man to put confidence in the Scriptures. 
And it also affords excellent ground for thinking 
that the Father in heaven, with His infallible 
foreknowledge of the minds He had given to men, 
would Himself exercise His most anxious care 
over His written revelation at the point where that 
care would be most evident and most convincing 
in the light of common earthly experience. 

What God did in and through the intellects of 
the Bible authors—what illumination He shed on 
divine secrets, what certainties He sent to replace 


THE PBOVIDENCE OF THE CANON 39 


uncertainties—is a speculation for which the or¬ 
dinary Christian's consciousness of God may give 
but little suggestion. But that God knows how 
through the quiet workings of years on years to 
accomplish in the end the “ bright designs ” which 
Cowper says He “ treasures up ” for the good of 
His children, is an observation commonplace to 
Christian faith throughout the world. God is to¬ 
day doing just that, as He has been from the dawn 
of history; thousands of those who love and trust 
Him dare even now to testify that they have seen 
Him working so. Wickednesses accumulate; 
tumults turn the world upside down; the treacher¬ 
ous and evil man has his short triumph and the 
righteous suffers unspeakable affliction; but yet 
through clouds and darkness God moves on to His 
foreseen goal, and at length the thing He meant 
comes to pass and the world learns that its Creator 
is not defeated nor His good intent confounded. 

Let us say then that the making of a Bible for 
the spiritual guidance of man is just another such 
“ bright design ” treasured patiently through cen¬ 
turies by the “ God of patience ”—as the Bible it¬ 
self calls Him. How instantly—and how appro¬ 
priately—the whole process in this light takes its 
place in that framework of providence wherein are 
comprehended the hopes of the devout for all good 
things present and to come. God watching and 
waiting through the centuries to accumulate just 
the words of direction by which His followers 
might best be guided to peace and security in a 
troublous world—what in all that is more mysteri- 


40 THE PROVIDENCE OF THE CANON 


ous or less credible than God planning through 
centuries to establish liberty, disseminate intelli¬ 
gence, suppress wrong and diffuse human good 
will? And where thousands and thousands from 
among even the agnostic and materialistic will ac¬ 
knowledge in the world the evidence of providen¬ 
tial progress toward these latter aims, how shall a 
Christian doubt the hand of God in the giving of 
the Bible to the race of mankind? Is His hand 
too weak or His patience too hasty for the long 
enterprise ? 

Suppose it is indeed true that the decision which 
included one writing within the canon or excluded 
another has once and again seemed to turn on the 
whim of prejudiced scholars or the accident of a 
scant majority in some convocation of ecclesiastics. 
Do these things negative God? Is it not through 
the midst of far more precarious human con¬ 
tingencies that the heavenly Father pursues the 
path of His secular purposes? And does He not 
have His way in the end even when all the hosts 
of evil are in league to frustrate His intent? In 
the face of such abundant history to prove how 
even the wrath of man is overruled to the praise 
of divine power in other things, why should it be 
hard to believe that in this matter the voice of 
councils and the judgment of church fathers have 
been controlled to register at last a consensus on 
the contents of Scripture wholly agreeable to su¬ 
preme Wisdom—accomplishing thus the comple¬ 
tion of what in all remaining time was to be the 
“ book of books ” for every land and all people? 


THE PROVIDENCE OF THE CANON 41 


Providential selection of its component parts be¬ 
comes then the great final seal by which the 
Church has warrant for its reliance on the Bible. 
By a method by which they know that their Guide 
is still working in the affairs of this world the 
people of God find themselves supplied with a 
mighty and satisfying manual of divine counsel. 
Its broad adequacy, its comprehensive worth, 
tested in the crucible of daily life to which it is 
subjected when men try to live by its precepts, 
justify the omnipotent toil of preparing it. 

And this from every practical standpoint dem¬ 
onstrates the Bible's sufficient perfection. It 
meets the need it was made for. Should any man 
complain of peculiarities in the book’s pages which 
he may think inconsistent with its asserted divin¬ 
ity, the perhaps crass but perfectly direct answer 
is that anything good enough for God should be 
good enough for him. The universe is full of 
proof that its Creator rejoices in things that work. 
The infinite mechanisms by which the stars are 
moved, the seasons made to roll round in due suc¬ 
cession, and life and death brought into the har¬ 
mony of an endless rhythm, get their ultimate 
approbation all from this—they do what they are 
meant to do. The Bible as a work of God is vin¬ 
dicated by the same law. It is a divine book be¬ 
cause it is perfectly effective for what God in¬ 
tended. And this in the orbit of cosmic efficiency 
comes back to the axiomatic converse of that state¬ 
ment—what the Bible suffices for is just what God 
intended. 


V 


THE COMPILATION OF THE BOOK 

G OD chose the materials that make up the 
Bible. By what standards of judgment 
did He prefer the contents thus preserved 
above the mass of now unknown manuscript which 
in the age-long process of compilation He must 
have discarded? No just human rating of the 
book in its entirety or in its several parts is pos¬ 
sible without some appreciation at least of the 
viewpoint from which God, as we may say, edited 
it. Definite reasons must have led to the use of 
each particular document accepted; it is impossi¬ 
ble to suppose that for such a result ancient writ¬ 
ings were poured at random into a collection of 
unstudied miscellany. Is it possible then to infer 
from the pages of Scripture why God took for 
His perpetual library of sacred things just the sub¬ 
ject matter which to-day is found in it? 

This at all events may be stated with assur¬ 
ance—that God’s reasons in these premises must 
all refer to the objects for which by His provi¬ 
dence the book was intended. Among these ob¬ 
jects, however, one minor factor may be supposed 
to have reacted negatively on many a possible 
choice. A Bible which was to serve as a religious 
handbook for the general host of men, must be 

42 


THE COMPILATION OF THE BOOK 43 


saved from too great bulk. Encyclopaedic tomes 
are studied in libraries by professional scholars; a 
book for everybody to read at home must be a 
small and condensed volume. What the Bible 
might have been in size is suggested by the later 
Jewish Talmuds. Produced in a garrulous age of 
dogmatism when Hebrew rabbis talked lifetimes 
away in vain debate over paltry casuistries, the 
Talmuds grew to ponderous proportions, over 
which none but a few plodding specialists in any 
generation have ever achieved even a half-under¬ 
standing mastery. 

For illumination to the .common people all this 
mammoth Talmudic literature has therefore 
amounted to nothing from its beginning until now. 
An unrestricted Bible would have come to the 
same useless fate. A Hand to prune it, to cut 
away thickets of words that would have darkened 
its rich fruits from the sight of ordinary men, 
was necessary in order to bestow on the modern 
world a book which a child may handle unbur¬ 
dened and which every believer can carry whole 
to his secret place of meditation and prayer. 
Many instances of economical restraint may be 
traced in the order of the universe; the compara¬ 
tive brevity of the Bible is one instance more. 

However, the Bible is what it is by God's in¬ 
clusions, not by His exclusions. The vital de¬ 
cisions were the affirmative choices, of course. 
And naturally the first question to be settled about 
a Bible writing—or a writing appearing available 
for the Bible—must be whether it conspires with 


44 THE COMPILATION OF THE BOOK 


the book’s first purpose. What is that purpose? 
Venturing* to think God’s thoughts after Him, the 
Bible is intended above all else to persuade men 
that they can have and ought to have fellowship 
with God. No composition of any human pen 
therefore could be suitable to form a part of the 
divine Scriptures if it did not tend to this funda¬ 
mental conviction. Whatever author gains the 
honour of appearing among the producers of the 
Bible must, like all others who please God, “ be¬ 
lieve that he is and that he is a rewarder of them 
that seek after him.” It must moreover be a be¬ 
lief on experience—experience of a man’s own, 
keen enough and clear enough to make him eager 
to help others to realize the same practical faith. 
Such were in fact the building stones out of which 
inspiration erected the imposing and time-defying 
structure of God’s supreme book. 

To be sure, the God-consciousness of some of 
the authors whose work is preserved in our Bible 
does not seem as clear and spiritually pure as this 
definition would appear to require. The writer of 
Esther, for example, was a person so little accus¬ 
tomed to a pious expression of his thoughts that 
he wrote his whole story without even the mention 
of God—a circumstance which has led certain 
strict conservative scholars to question whether the 
production ever possessed any inspiration at all. 
Yet a study of its atmosphere rather than its text 
exposes qualities in the rehearsal of Queen Es¬ 
ther’s heroism which leave but small difficulty in 
understanding why this brief history was chosen 


THE COMPILATION OF THE BOOK 45 


by the Spirit of inspiration to be bound up in the 
Bible volume. Possibly, indeed, such a section as 
this was brought into the compass of Scripture 
with a sympathetic thought for men who find it 
hard to get deeper in their talk than a few oblique 
hints at the religious faith which they carry hidden 
in their hearts. However that may be, though, it 
is at least evident that in his heart of hearts the 
author of Esther was one worshipping the God 
who, as Lowell says, stands “ within the shadows 
keeping watch above His own.” He was a real, 
even if unconfessed, man of faith. 

It was, then, with the diffident restraint that 
usually characterizes men of his temperament, but 
with a faith that would not let him be wholly 
silent, that this now nameless historian used his 
pen on a record by which he hoped he could nerve 
men and women to depend on the sureness of God 
even in the darkest of adversities—and live up to 
their best sense of duty no matter what dangers 
threatened. He had too a clairvoyant persuasion 
that “ every man’s life is a plan of God ”—that 
nobody is born into the world “ whose work is not 
born with him ”—and he put that consecrating 
idea into words that youth at least will not forget: 
“ Who knoweth whether thou art not come to the 
kingdom for such a time as this ? ” Should not 
then the everyday modern Christian, to whom such 
clear confidence in the providential ordering of 
man’s life is vastly rich in both comfort and stim¬ 
ulus, give thanks that the Spirit of God never es¬ 
tablished any arbitrary rule requiring God’s name 


46 THE COMPILATION OF THE BOOK 


to appear in each separate contribution to Scrip¬ 
ture. That wouid have left out Esther entirely. 
What is requisite everywhere is a message that 
points and leads to God. And that Esther surely 
has despite its secular-sounding text. 

More dubious under this criterion is the right 
of the Song of Solomon to be reckoned among the 
sacred writings of true religion. It does contain 
once the divine Name. But there is in it far less 
consciousness of living and moving beneath the 
eye of God than in the heroic romance of the 
Persian queen. Besides, the “ song ” (which is 
really a drama) has suffered in repute from the 
meddling of doctrinaires who have foolishly tried 
to save it as canonical by pretending that it is 
something which it never was or could be. Not 
content to let its literary character stand as the 
Holy Spirit left it, these meddlers have tried to 
veneer the drama with a fictitious interpretation 
expected to make it look religious. By fantastic 
allegorizing they would exhibit it as a picture of 
the love of Christ and His Church—a violent 
manipulation without a shred of reason in the 
poem itself but alleged to be necessary in order to 
make its tone sanctimonious enough to accord with 
an inspired Bible. As if men better than the Spirit 
know what does accord with an inspired Bible! 

From such means of commending it to the re¬ 
spect of the Bible’s friends, the Song of Solomon 
has in truth suffered ten times more than it 
profited. Many readers have instinctively as¬ 
sumed that a piece of literature which, as it 


THE COMPILATION OF THE BOOK 47 


seemed, could not be vindicated for religious use 
except by distortions obnoxious to common sense, 
must be of small consequence, if not quite out of 
place, in a book drawing its credentials from God. 
But their verdict might have been very different 
if reason for its appearing within the canon had 
been sought in its own inherent character rather 
than in an artificial halo invented to sanctify it. 

Really responsible scholarship reports instead 
that the Song of Solomon is in fact a delicately 
wrought idyll glorifying stainless fidelity in ro¬ 
mantic love between woman and man. Under an 
oriental exuberance of imagery obscure to western 
understanding, patient study traces the story of a 
country maiden stolen from her shepherd swain 
and carried away to the king’s harem, where in 
the simplicity of a pure and steadfast heart she 
repulses royal blandishments until in sheer honour 
to her loyalty the king restores her to her rustic 
lover, from whom the allegiance of her heart had 
never a moment wavered. If only the people of 
God had kept a just sense of the sacredness with 
which the Creator invested the sex facts of life 
when “ male and female created he them,” it is 
scarcely possible that surprise would greet the sug¬ 
gestion that a love drama—a drama of true love 
—held a central place in the written word of God. 

It is humanity’s jesting or sensual degradations 
of love which make such a theme seem strange in 
such a book. In an elder age and an eastern life, 
where the sense of the story would be more in¬ 
telligible to the common mind, the poem may 


48 THE COMPILATION OF THE BOOK 


doubtless have helped many a soul to know the 
holiness in God’s sight of love and marriage. And 
that assuredly would be leading a man closer to 
the divine. Let us not then disavow even this 
strangely mystic “ song ” as unworthy of the 
Bible. Possibly the day may come when its re¬ 
covered meaning will again shed a hallowed light 
on the unity of those “ whom God hath joined to¬ 
gether.” 

It is impossible, however, to prolong in detail 
the inquiry how each particular element in this 
composite Bible helps on the single coordinate aim 
of pointing men to God. The fact which the il¬ 
lustrations just discussed tend to show might be 
fortified by consecutive citations from every one 
of the Bible’s sixty-six divisions—there is but one 
aim in the book but that aim is fulfilled in a variety 
of modes too manifold to count. The Bible has 
consistency without sameness. 

Men are best won to confidence in God by 
knowledge of what He has been to generations 
past who served Him. The Bible meets that with 
its abundant histories, culminating in the history 
of Plim in whom “ dwelleth all the fullness of the 
Godhead bodily.” Men learn to praise God by 
examples of praise; how rich the Bible is in that 
incentive. They are taught to think right about 
God as they share the thoughts of the right think¬ 
ers of the past; the Bible is the ultimate school for 
that crowning art of the human mind. And there 
are portions besides to glorify simple common 
sense. 


THE COMPILATION OP THE BOOK 49 


So it becomes apparent that another of God’s 
guiding principles for selection of the Scriptures 
is the need of wide variety. Variety is demanded 
by men’s different moods and circumstances; there 
must be much for the man in joy, but that neces¬ 
sity cannot be permitted to skimp the comfort pro¬ 
vided for the man in grief. A provision for the 
satisfaction of a man’s reason as he questions the 
ways of God is indispensable. But it would be a 
sadly inadequate Bible which spoke only to reason 
and had no voice of appeal to a man’s emotions 
and no challenge for his will. Optimism and ap¬ 
prehension, daring and caution, conservatism and 
progressiveness—all these must be balanced 
against one another if the moral movement of 
mankind is kept in equilibrium. And true to every 
need the Bible supplies all these elements in an 
absolute wealth of variousness. May God be 
praised again for His “ divers manners.” 


VI 


THE TRUTH OF THE MESSAGE 

S URER than all else in the Christian’s con¬ 
viction concerning the Bible is his faith 
that the Bible is true. An undeniable spir¬ 
itual instinct would demand that, even if the in¬ 
ferences of reason did not. It is the same instinct 
which breaks to the surface so emphatically in 
Paul’s abrupt exclamation: “Yea, let God be 
found true and every man a liar.” Whoever or 
whatever else is false in the universe, God must 
not be; the universe dissolves at the very imagina¬ 
tion of a truthless Creator. And by necessity if 
the God of truth prepares for mankind a book re¬ 
vealing His ways and will, that too must be a 
book of truth. 

The very soundness of this confidence in Scrip¬ 
ture truth may, however, betray the unconsidering 
and superficial to unwarranted conclusions. So- 
called plain thinking on supposedly obvious topics 
often speeds too fast to fixed opinions. Truth 
seems an idea of such clarity that few perhaps 
think of its requiring analysis in order to discrim¬ 
inate between characters and forms of truth. In 
the story of world events offered by the daily pa¬ 
per there is commonly no question involved but 

50 


THE TRUTH OF THE MESSAGE 


51 


the simple test: Did what is told here happen as 
it is here related or did it not? Even in the cur¬ 
rent press, however, when editor or correspondent 
assumes to estimate the motives and delineate the 
influence of a statesman, a party or a movement, 
the fidelity of the report depends on something 
deeper than the literal precision of the facts as¬ 
serted. The facts may all be actual and yet the 
interpretation of them totally astray; either be¬ 
cause all the elements of the case have not been 
brought into view or because the commentator is 
deficient in understanding of what he does see. 

In a still deeper stratum of thought, where men 
deal with the philosophy of life, mere accuracy of 
statement is less sufficient to convey truth. False 
teachers in economics, sociology or religion are but 
seldom liars; in the average case they tell facts 
quite indisputably. But they tell the facts in 
wrong relations, and expose their inherent falsity 
when facts which do not suit their theories they 
willfully pass by. In all the greater interests of 
human life it takes something better than a correct 
reporter to speak the truth; only a man having 
(according to Bible language) “truth in the in¬ 
ward parts ”—a man saturated with love of truth¬ 
fulness—is capable of marshalling into his view 
and into the view of other men that wholeness of 
reality which alone is worthy to be called in any 
large sense the truth. 

If thus difficult and unusual is the comprehen¬ 
sion of the whole truth in the graver of humanity’s 
own concerns, how much more difficult must it be 


52 


THE TKUTH OF THE MESSAGE 


to attain a truthful grasp of the far profounder 
things that have to do with the mutual concerns 
of man and God. Whether it is man’s responsi¬ 
bility as a self-willing moral creature or his di¬ 
vinely surprising opportunity to help God realize 
the immortal ideals to which creation is dedicated 
—whatever the message, warning or summoning, 
which the word from heaven is designed to convey 
—this at least is sure in any case, that expression 
of the thought will overtax the capacity of the 
brain and soul chosen to be the channel of it. 
Nevertheless it is such supernal ideas as these that 
the Bible does express. From this viewpoint the 
making of a Bible ranks with the most marvellous 
achievements of omniscient ingenuity. As in na¬ 
ture, so in the realm of grace, the very simplicity 
of God’s solved problems often disguises from us 
the impossibilities that He has conquered. Did 
we but look more closely, we should wonder vastly 
more. 

With singular aptness just this may be said of 
the Bible. God has made it a book of truth—the 
book of the greatest, sublimest, deepest and broad¬ 
est truth that the world knows—in spite of the 
human disqualifications which everywhere must 
clog the project of revealing infinite realities to 
finite understanding. His methods have taken ac¬ 
count of the obstacles and have overcome them 
with the same practical directness which the 
world’s best engineers learn from the tutelage of 
nature. When the resistance of a transmission 
wire hinders the producer of electric power from 


THE TRUTH OP THE MESSAGE 


53 


sending a greater current through that one medium, 
he does not despair of distributing the energy 
which his dynamos are generating; he parallels 
the loaded cable with another of equal capacity. 
And the new wire, with all later fellows strung on 
the same circuit of distribution, not only carries its 
own load of power but by induction intensifies the 
service of every comrade in the task. 

It is by means very like this that God sends 
down to men the vital power of the Spirit which 
His Bible is effectually devised to carry. Had He 
used but the one lone wire of any single mind to 
diffuse to the world His truth, the whole truth 
could never have been communicated in any re¬ 
ligious sufficiency. Not the most capacious hu¬ 
man brain escapes restrictions that narrow the re¬ 
ceptive faculties of the soul; were God to bestow 
all spiritual knowledge on some one favoured serv¬ 
ant of His, the treasure would inevitably overflow 
the vessel and run to waste. Still more, the in¬ 
evitable bent of peculiarity which makes every 
man his special and individual self, forbids the 
hope that God’s messages could traverse any hu¬ 
man intellect without being subject to some per¬ 
sonal diffraction in the passage. To use more than 
one medium is the necessary means of cancelling 
this factor of human idiosyncrasy. 

In revealing His salvation to the world, there¬ 
fore, God must plan multiple transmission. Not 
one prophet but many; not a sole and lonely 
apostle hut a varied group; not a single psalmist 
but a guild of singers; not an outstanding unique 


54 


THE TRUTH OF THE MESSAGE 


historian but a multitude of chroniclers—by these 
He made sure of imparting to men the rich full¬ 
ness of a manifolded Gospel. It is not only 
ampler in content than any single voice could have 
conveyed, but it is richer in colour, taking bril¬ 
liance from every faithful personality who has 
been divinely used to contribute to it. The many 
prisms that pass along the light impart to the Bible 
an alluring variety of hue and tint like to the 
iridescence by which in nature the dewdrop and 
rainbow are bejewelled. 

Saying all this, we must not forget that in the 
noonday of this Bible revelation there came One 
who spake like never man spake or could speak. 
In this “ crystal Christ ” there was found and in 
His voice there was heard, as Lanier said, no “ if 
or yet.” And the reverence of the world from 
that day till now continues to bear witness that 
His words measured a wholeness of truth such as 
humanity has seen no other of its teachers able 
to compass. Age succeeds age, since He lived on 
earth and left it, and still there is nothing to sub¬ 
tract from His sayings nor anything to add save 
what echoes their wisdom. Were there no other 
argument for the supernaturally supreme character 
which the New Testament ascribes to the Central 
Person of its story, the circumferential complete¬ 
ness of His preaching—fragmentally reported 
though it was—would remain in glowing contrast 
to the fractional emphasis of every other religious 
leader throughout all time, and would refute every 
explanation of the difference except the explana- 


THE TRUTH OF THE MESSAGE 55 

tion which sets Him higher than all others of 
earth. 

Even in connection with His incomparable life 
and words, however, the point of argument in this 
study comes again into convincing view. If Jesus 
comprehended the complete circled unity of truth 
as no man might, the four Gospels are yet a 
graphic demonstration that even among His dis¬ 
ciples none obtained from Him anything like an 
equal catholicity of mind. Those nearest to Him, 
like ourselves to this day, were tied to personal 
points of view, from which each took the opinion 
and estimate of the Master most in accord with 
his own singularity of temperament or interest. 

If but the Synoptic Gospels remained to us we 
should in this remote day of the Christian epoch 
be dwelling far too exclusively on the human traits 
of our Lord and the human elements in His per¬ 
sonality. If on the other hand all our knowledge 
of Jesus were supplied to us by the story which 
John wrote, the Saviour by this time would have 
become an almost mystic wraith, of whose fleshly 
brotherhood with ourselves we should perhaps be 
in despairing doubt. It is the possession of all 
four of these differing pictures of the Lord—for 
happily even the portraits of the synoptists are not 
absolute duplicates—which, like the duplex vision of 
a man’s two eyes, lifts the figure of Jesus into the 
roundness of distinct and embodied vitality. Who 
among us can fail of gratitude that the “ provi¬ 
dence of the canon ” did not leave us depending 
on but a single biography of our Master? How 


56 


THE TEUTH OF THE MESSAGE 


poorly we should know Him without the fourfold 
fullness of the evangel by which the Holy Spirit 
has bequeathed to us our historic knowledge of 
Jesus. 

From all that has thus been said, it follows that 
the truth of Bible revelation is reserved for him 
who searches for it not in a part of the Scriptures 
but through their whole range. If indeed one per¬ 
sists in confining himself within given portions 
which seem to chime with some characteristic note 
of his thinking or experience, it cannot be said 
that he is deceived. An observer who has viewed 
some mighty mountain mass from but one favourite 
outlook has certainly seen the mountain. He may 
be taken as a true witness to the fact of the moun¬ 
tain’s greatness and solidity. But his individual 
description of it would be an ill guide to depend 
upon. What could he from his stationary angle 
tell of the mountain’s aspects of grandeur from 
various points of observation, its compass, its en¬ 
vironing features? So the specialist in one or an¬ 
other Bible doctrine as gleaned from a single au¬ 
thor or a special passage, may not be said to be 
lost from truth. But it is not safe to accept him as 
an expositor of all that the Bible means or all that 
truth embodies. Not a specialist but a generalizer 
—one who walks round about Jerusalem to tell 
all the towers thereof—alone can approximate true 
Biblical theology. 

In fact, to interpret the Bible rightly a student 
of the Scriptures needs to be a genius in synthesis. 
When Paul says that faith saves men, he is right. 


THE TRUTH OF THE MESSAGE 


57 


When James says that men are saved by works, 
he is right. But neither apart from the other has 
the truth. It is idle to pretend, as some have done 
because they misconceive what inspiration implies, 
that both apostles are saying the same thing under 
different terms. If they were saying the same 
thing, there would be no need of having the say¬ 
ings of both in the Bible. They are both in the 
Bible because the partial view of each goes to help 
make a whole view of the facts in the case, as the 
two conceptions are not contrasted but combined. 
One mapped one-half of the great mountain peak 
of salvation; the other mapped the other half. 
Put the two together and you will know the whole 
noble country in which both were God-glorifying 
explorers. 

So Paul's conception of God's stern sovereignty 
and John’s passionate vision of God’s overflowing 
love afford but fragmental notions of God when 
held apart. United they begin to unfold the true 
measure of the divine Greatness. The difference 
is not disputatious but complementary and corrob¬ 
orative. Something of the same thing requires 
to be said of the Old Testament revelation of a 
God concerned to use one special nation for special 
purposes in His providence and the New Testa¬ 
ment revelation of a God loving all nations with an 
impartial Fatherhood. It is the way of spiritual 
poverty to reject one of those thoughts—special 
or universal providence—and take the other. Let 
us instead be rich by believing both. And the 
pessimism of Ecclesiastes—if a man fed on that 


58 


THE TRUTH OF THE MESSAGE 


alone he would never be able to lift his voice in 
any sort of praise to God. Yet when one has 
given over his whole reckless soul to gayety and 
irresponsibility, then Ecclesiastes is the very salt he 
needs to keep his life from putrefaction. A phar¬ 
macopoeia for every spiritual disease is the Bible; 
a cyclopaedia of all spiritual wisdom too. Not less 
than all of it is sufficient. 

Wherefore God had to take care to make the 
book not only compact enough, as we have said 
before, but also capacious enough. 


THE BIBLE'S HUMAN ELEMENT 


H OW far is the Bible affected by the hu¬ 
man limitations of its writers? Like¬ 
wise, in what degree has the Bible been 
limited by undeveloped capacities, either intellec¬ 
tual or spiritual, in those for whom immediately 
it was written, who were the first to be religiously 
instructed by it? 

We have already taken into account one limita¬ 
tion which the most jealous interpreter of inspired 
Scripture will scarcely be at pains to disallow. It 
is in fact a restriction which seems involved neces¬ 
sarily in the very thought of divine revelation. 
There would be no need of supernatural reveal- 
ment if the ideas which are thereby communi¬ 
cated to men were not greater in reach and com¬ 
pass than the native measure of the human mind. 
It is well to recall how vividly that was impressed 
on the consciousness of the prophet who repeated 
God's reminder of it: “ For as the heavens are 
higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than 
your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts." 

It would be incredible to suppose that any form 
of inspiration could eliminate this disparity. That 
virtually would be eliminating the difference be¬ 
tween the finite and the Infinite. A human being 
exalted to see all and think all as God sees and 


59 



60 THE BIBLE’S HUMAN ELEMENT 


thinks could hardly be counted human thereafter. 
Certainly no man in the long succession of mes¬ 
sengers by whom our Bible came to us can be 
thought to have enjoyed the inspiration of God 
in higher form than the Apostle Paul. And he has 
let us know very plainly that he had no sense of 
having been elevated thereby to any transcendent 
level of intelligence. He meekly included himself 
along with all the fellow-believers to whom he 
wrote when he said not only, '‘We know in part,” 
but as well, “We prophesy in part.” 

Paul in his epistles wrote truth as best he saw 
it, but he never for a moment imagined that he was 
furnishing to the Church on earth a transcript 
complete of the endless counsels of heaven. Only 
in an after life and in a far diviner atmosphere, 
“ when that which is perfect is come,” did he hope 
to “ see face to face ” and to “ know fully ” even 
as by the all-seeing and unconditioned knowledge 
of God he had always “ been fully known.” No, 
it would not have been the Apostle Paul who would 
care to dispute the statement that even the inspired 
Scriptures partake in this present world of the 
partialness which affects all things done by the 
hands and through the agency of man. 

There follows from this a consequence which 
cannot be blinked. If, as we have said in a pre¬ 
vious study, it has frequently been necessary for 
the Divine Oversight to accumulate the testimony 
of two or three or four men in order to complete 
a round view of truth whereof individually each 
saw but a half, a third or a quarter, then there 


THE BIBLE’S HUMAN ELEMENT 


61 


runs with this the inevitable risk that in each com¬ 
ponent section the respective author may have 
overemphasized that fractional phase of truth 
which he peculiarly felt. 

Not appreciating all the qualifying facts, he 
would be almost certain to state his special fact too 
broadly. Thus in regard to the Old Testament 
conception of God as the national protector of His 
chosen Israel (which, as has already been noted, 
had eventually to be rounded out by the New 
Testament revelation of God’s impartial compas¬ 
sion for all mankind), it is plain that until this 
complemental truth did dawn on the people of 
Jehovah they misunderstood very many things 
about God’s will for other nations and therefore in 
some cases at least misjudged what was just and 
right in their relations to neighbouring nationali¬ 
ties. Assuredly then it can be considered no mat¬ 
ter of wonder if portions of Scripture written dur¬ 
ing the period when the nation of Israel enter¬ 
tained such circumscribed ideas of God are now 
discovered to bear evidence of those restricted 
views, resulting in overstressed sympathy with 
nationalistic prejudices then current. 

Nobody who really believes in God will make 
any doubt that God was entirely able, in even so 
primitive and illiberal an epoch, to lay hold on 
some extraordinary man and illuminate him with 
all the world vision that thrilled the souls of Paul 
and John in apostolic days. God can do any 
miracle that He pleases. But He does even His 
miracles according to law—the law of progress by 


62 THE BIBLE’S HUMAN ELEMENT 


which He steadily presses on from epoch to epoch 
to fulfill His cosmic projects. Never yet has God 
been found using a miracle to provide for impa¬ 
tience a quick road to eternal results. And surely 
He did no such thing in providing for man a Bible. 
Let us reverently say, He took His time to it. 

When therefore the Holy Scriptures began to 
take form, the Divine Power attempted no sudden 
“ tour de force ” which might have created over 
night a volume of ultimate perfection up to the 
level of what were to be civilized man’s peak at¬ 
tainments in thought and idealism. Had it been 
such a book into which God put His revelation of 
Himself, it would have been a useless mystery to 
the patriarchal ages. Perhaps it would be still a 
sealed riddle even to our time. A vain human 
experimenter might have done so futile a thing 
as that if he had had the power. God knew better. 
It is not a cabalistic Bible which we have. 

The real fact is that our Father in heaven—this 
too we have already said—was from the first 
working for His children in each age of history 
just where they were and as they were. He was 
imposing on them no cryptograms which would 
have to be left for some rarer race of wiseacres in 
unforeseen time ahead to interpret. Like a true Fa¬ 
ther He sent His messages in language which then 
and there His sons and daughters might receive un- 
derstandingly. He spoke to them, that is to say, by 
men of their own time and their own tongue. A 
prophet miraculously thrust forward into touch 
with the ideas and reasonings, the discoveries and 


THE BIBLE’S HUMAN ELEMENT 63 


inventions, of some century then veiled in the 
cloudland of the future, could have said nothing 
comprehensible to his contemporaries. The 
prophet had to be a man of his own day. What 
he said and what he wrote was primarily for the 
inspiriting, the guidance, the reclamation, of men 
and women all around him. 

Not that any Bible-writer was ever just one in 
a crowd. Always God’s message-bearer has to be 
somebody a little way ahead. Otherwise he would 
not know what to call the people forward to. And 
the divine word is always a call to be moving on. 
Yet the voice which speaks for God must not be 
too far in advance if it is to sound loud in the 
ears of the called. So always there are tones and 
accents in it but a little less rude and crude than 
the mass speech of the hour. If the message is 
put in writing, there are sure to be finger prints of 
the current generation here and there on the manu¬ 
script. An absolutely timeless literary work may 
or may not be conceivable. But there is at least no 
such thing in the Bible. 

It cannot be denied that from material of this 
sort, which seems too timely and too popular to 
be anything but evanescent, it appears an improb¬ 
able, if not impossible, hope to expect the evolution 
of a standard religious book on which later ages 
might rely as a permanent guide to the will and 
work of God. And so it would be if there were 
naught but impersonal evolution behind it. But 
because the design of a foreseeing and choosing 
heavenly Father is there, the hope is not vain. 


64 


THE BIBLE’S HUMAN ELEMENT 


No doubt, out of all that the Holy Spirit has 
prompted men to write in times past for the relig¬ 
ious teaching of humanity, the great overplus has 
been too deeply contaminated with the transient 
bias of a half-instructed world for any use to be 
made of it in a perpetuated Bible. But here and 
there the Omniscient Eye has discovered some 
mighty document so full of burning vision of 
spiritual realities, so vibrant with the actual experi¬ 
ence of souls in touch with the Soul Divine, that 
providence could by no means afford to let it dis¬ 
appear from the sacred treasures of religion. What 
then if, on the surface of so invaluable a witness 
to things unseen but eternal, there should appear 
exposed certain blemishes of inadequate or even 
distorted understanding? Will God cast away all 
the brilliant wealth of its truth because there cling 
to it some minor fragments of human imperfec¬ 
tion? 

Perhaps He must have done so if there had been 
no other way of setting right the misapprehensions 
involved. But He had another way. Down the 
vista of coming days God saw a time when His 
servants would comprehend more clearly the 
subtler spiritual facts of which a former age was 
uncertain. So the divine Editor needed not to 
discard what was “ written aforetime,” even 
though marked by the lacks and insufficiencies of 
the period. Well He knew that later “ men after 
his own heart ” would complete this insufficient 
truth, and in the perfected Bible its positive testi¬ 
monies would count for sustenance of faith, while 


THE BIBLE’S HUMAN ELEMENT 


65 


all its negative defects would be absorbed in the 
adequacy of the book entire. 

Such a method of building up a book of reve¬ 
lation might be judged quite inconsistent with the 
character of God—whose own perfections invite 
confidence in the unqualified perfection of all His 
works—if it were not for our constant observa¬ 
tion of the like means by which He trains the race 
of humanity in all other concerns of life. Every¬ 
where He educates men from smaller to greater 
by processes which leave more for them to find 
out than He tells them—more for them to do than 
He does for them. Not the instantaneous fiat of 
His own will which makes all things perfect at a 
stroke, but the patient progress of step by step 
which leads men to higher knowing and broader 
seeing and deeper feeling, while the guiding God 
walks beside them, is His manifest preference for 
achieving His objects in this world—whatever 
may be His working plan elsewhere in creation. 

In that original home of man which the Bible 
has taught us to call the Garden of Eden, there 
were present all the forces which to-day light the 
lamps and move the enginery of civilization, and 
God, had He wished, might have begun history 
with the steam and electricity of a modern me¬ 
tropolis. But He made known to humanity in the 
morning of its annals no more than the secret of 
turning the soil and planting the seed; as the Bible 
expresses it, “Jehovah took the man and put him 
into the garden to dress it and to keep it.” And 
from that simple start in primitive agriculture 


66 THE BIBLE’S HUMAN ELEMENT 


God left the man to climb, with strengths divinely 
provided but humanly exercised, to the pinnacle 
of present science, where physically puny human' 
ity controls powers of nature which antiquity 
never dreamed that the hierarchies of heaven itself 
might wield. 

It surely cannot be deemed ungodlike if for 
man’s spiritual training an analogous progress is 
traceable in divine revelation. It may be counted 
sure that in the life of the soul as in the life of the 
body the Creator would establish man with capital 
enough to live by from the beginning. The earli¬ 
est life entitled to be called human had a conscious¬ 
ness of God—turned to God as the earliest flower 
turned to the sun—and dimly at least appreciated 
that pleasing God was the secret of all well-being. 
In primeval time, as always since, God “ left not 
himself without witness.” But it was manifestly 
not His will to show all in one blinding dazzle of 
illumination. His messages were destined to 
“ grow from more to more.” As He had planted 
in the human soul that inextinguishable instinct 
which ever prompts mankind to “ seek God if 
haply they might feel after him and find him,” 
so He provided for them the reward of something 
ever remaining to be learned—which is likewise 
his reward who seeks God through nature. 

Till “the fullness of the time came” the Fa¬ 
ther even delayed to let shine on men “ the light 
of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face 
of Jesus Christ.” And still, after the calendar of 
men’s redemption had brought round the day when 


THE BIBLE’S HUMAN ELEMENT 


67 


the “ very image ” of the Father must needs be 
seen on earth, there remained much yet to be re¬ 
vealed and be learned—things which, as Jesus 
Himself said, His dearest disciples were not yet 
prepared to hear. Even with the Bible complete, 
knowledge was and is not complete. The Spirit 
of truth, as the Lord Himself promised, even yet 
leads into truth those who love the truth. 

The thought then of progressive revelation need 
offend no one who is not offended by progressive 
science. Each is of God—each by the wisdom of 
Him who knows all is conditioned on and adapted 
to His faith in humanity’s capacity to know more. 
Likewise let us be sure that one process quite as 
much as the other is under God’s providential 
guidance, guaranteeing both against frustration or 
incorrigible deflection. The heavenly Overseer 
has always taken care that the world had men in 
it with the spirit of quest desiring to know earthly 
things. So likewise have there never failed men 
having the spirit of quest desiring to know 
heavenly things. Of these latter, in the ages when 
the Bible was building, came forth the authors of 
what are now our Scriptures. They sought to 
know. God met them and told them. Then they 
wrote and what they wrote God preserved for us. 
No common men were they; they were great men 
attaining an ineffable companionship in high re¬ 
gions beyond the ken of the earth-bound. And 
it was the reality of that spiritual greatness which 
made them fit to write of God—fit to be the re¬ 
ligious benefactors of the world to this day. 


VIII 

THE MIRAGE OF INERRANCY 


I T may dismay some to realize that what has 
just been said about human limitations in the 
Bible forestalls the possibility of establishing 
for the book a claim to inerrancy—which by many 
is considered to be the essential verifying quality 
inseparable from divine inspiration. In some sec¬ 
tions of nearly all Protestant bodies it is a prac¬ 
tically unquestioned dogma that if any error of 
any sort were demonstrably discovered anywhere 
within the covers of the Holy Bible, the whole 
book by that fact would be stripped of any ra¬ 
tional title to a status of divine authority. Others, 
a little less positive on this point, say simply that 
if any portion of the book were found to contain 
erroneous statements, that portion would have to 
be excluded from the range of inspired Scripture. 
And there are many unbelievers who, taking these 
friends of the Bible at their word, point out what 
they regard as undeniable errors on certain Bible 
pages, and by that consideration alone assume that 
they have set themselves free from every obliga¬ 
tion to heed or even respect the volume. 

Therefore one who has spoken of deficiencies in 
the Scriptures which appear to result from the 
ignorance or incompetence of the times in which 
they were written, has risked the peril of paining 

68 


THE MIBAGE OF INEBEANCY 


69 


a host of devout Bible-lovers—or, better said, 
Bible-trusters. It behooves such a one, then, to 
hasten to make clear that the power of the Bible 
—its worth, its right to speak to human souls, its 
conveyance of the message from God—do not de¬ 
pend on inerrancy and are not vacated when the 
student of the Scriptures abandons the effort to 
show that the Bible is a book of no mistakes. 

To be sure, it is easy to conceive mistakes which 
would invalidate the Scriptures—mistakes about 
God, mistakes about the duty of man toward God, 
mistakes about the right way of living amid one’s 
fellow men; such errors, if pervading the Bible as 
a whole and standing unmodified by any later and 
superseding instruction, would indeed render the 
book morally untrustworthy and spiritually mis¬ 
leading. But we have already set forth, in part 
at least, the reasons why evangelical Christianity 
holds by the faith that in the Bible we have God’s 
great bequeathed guide-book designed to direct the 
feet of men into the paths of divine fellowship 
and divine obedience. To that faith it is indeed 
an indispensable corollary that the guide-book 
must guide to the true path; any other imputation 
would “ make of none effect the faithfulness of 
God.” 

If the Bible is not to be relied on as an agency 
of what we have defined as its supreme purpose 
—the consummation of vital intercommunion be¬ 
tween man and God; if it will not lead to that 
consummation the man who comes to it with a 
hunger for God in his soul—then all too surely 


70 


THE MIRAGE OP INERRANCY 


God is not in the book. But if it does by the 
exhortation of its counsels and the example of its 
living personalities—especially its chief Person¬ 
ality—show men the way to live for, with and in 
their divine Lord and Saviour, then by a far 
greater surety God is in the book. That the latter 
is the constant and indefeasible fact about the in¬ 
fluence of the Bible among mankind, evangelical 
theology has steadfastly believed from the Refor¬ 
mation onward, and the historic expression of that 
confidence is the affirmation that with reference 
to faith and practice the Holy Scriptures offer— 
not an inerrant but—an infallible standard of spir¬ 
itual instruction. 

On the dictionary page there may appear but a 
figment of difference between these two adjectives 
—“ infallible ” and “ inerrant ”—and from that 
viewpoint the attempt to assign them diverse 
meanings may seem an artificial play with words. 
But the atmosphere which surrounds the two 
terms in the field of theological discussion affords 
full reason for saying that the Bible by no means 
needs to be inerrant in order to be infallible. The 
two phrasings do not paint the same picture. 
When “ infallible ” is the word used, there rises 
on one’s vision a mighty thought of power and 
authority radiating from the Bible as a central 
luminary in the moral sky just as energy radiates 
from the daily sun in the firmament of heaven. 
But when one says “ inerrant,” the suggestion to 
the mind is rather a picking and paltering over 
trifles, a persistence about the insignificant—as if 


THE MIBAGE OF INEBB ABC Y 


71 


a man perishing with cold should refuse to warm 
himself at a fire until he had ascertained that no 
stick longer or shorter than twenty-four inches 
was burning in the blazing pile. So indeed there 
are Bible students who bother endlessly about the 
sticks in the fire-heap—just how this text should 
be laid on or across that other text—and they 
never get a flame started that will warm either 
themselves or anybody else. For many such peo¬ 
ple it would be a great relief of soul if from their 
small fussiness they could be delivered into the 
large knowledge that what signifies for the faith 
of a Christian is a Bible to be depended on in the 
whole bulk of its truth—to which inerrancy in 
mere detail could add not a featherweight of 
worth. 

That this is not a position perilous to the spirit 
or untenable for the mind, all believers may re¬ 
assure themselves by remembering that the claim 
to be without errors of human misinformation is 
a claim that the Bible never makes for itself. It 
is true, indeed, that extensive elements in the early 
histories of the Bible and in the prophets—the 
major prophets especially—are set down as direct 
quotations from the mouth of Jehovah. Notable 
in the materials so sanctioned is the Mosaic law, 
almost every section of which is introduced by the 
standardized phrase, “ Jehovah spake unto Moses.” 
But there is no hint in history or prophecy of any 
means other than honest human memory employed 
to guarantee the Biblical record of Jehovah’s 
words. Indeed, it is possible without irreverence 


72 


THE MIRAGE OP INERRANCY 


to affirm that in the case of the most permanently 
important of those divinely spoken laws—the ten 
commandments—the transcription into Israel's 
statute books was not letter-perfect. Memory and 
record—even though the record is said to have 
existed for centuries in graven stone—have failed 
to preserve for us the knowledge of what exactly 
God said when He spoke out of the clouds of 
Sinai to the awed Hebrew tribes massed in the 
plain below. 

If this appears startling to any Bible reader, 
he needs only to compare the twentieth chapter of 
Exodus with the fifth chapter of Deuteronomy 
and note the differences between the recital of the 
ten commandments in those two passages. It is 
quite true that the differences are of no conse¬ 
quence as relates to the moral force of the deca¬ 
logue; the reader gets from one passage just as 
well as from the other the will of God for the 
conduct of life. But the point here is that the 
conveyance of that eternal truth is accomplished 
without any changeless crystallization of the words 
used. 

The main divergencies, as any student may see 
for himself, are in the fourth commandment. Ex¬ 
odus tells that God gave as a reason for the sacred¬ 
ness of the Sabbath His own rest after the com¬ 
pletion of creation, and the form of statement in¬ 
dicates that it had already been a hallowed day as 
long as the world had stood. Deuteronomy pre¬ 
sents the Sabbath institution as a memorial newly 
established to keep the Israelites reminded of their 


THE MIRAGE OF INERRANCY 


73 


deliverance from Egypt. It may be held that God 
named both reasons. But that, if it is considered 
to be really probable, would only reemphasize the 
point which is here being stressed, for in that event 
neither record affords an exact transcript. The 
ten commandments are infallible without doubt— 
all the consent of moral thinking throughout the 
ages testifies to that. But the form in which we 
have them cannot possibly be shown to be inerrant. 

The dogmatic faith of the Church has always, 
and the personal faith of the Christian has nearly 
as invariably, attributed to the words of Jesus 
Christ a divine authority no less than the formula, 
“ Thus saith Jehovah,” imparts to those passages 
to which it is attached in the Old Testament. Yet 
here the test of inerrancy fails even more obviously 
than in the older writings. There has heretofore 
been discussed the ground for saying that the 
quadruple story of the Gospels which the Holy 
Spirit has provided in our Bible affords the later 
world a much more realistic appreciation of the 
great soul of Jesus Christ than any single biog¬ 
raphy could have furnished. But it is equally true 
(though minutely less important in comparison) 
that these four accounts, when set side by side, 
compel us to realize that we shall never know the 
exact terms in which the Lord put some of His 
most graphic sayings nor the precise circumstances 
surrounding some of the greatest moments of His 
experience in this world. 

Take for example His beatitudes. Did He say, 
“ Blessed are ye poor,” or did He say, “ Blessed 


74 


THE MIEAGE OP INERRANCY 


are the poor in spirit ” ? Luke repeats the utter¬ 
ance in the first form; Matthew in the second. 
Sometimes with such various readings the student 
may say that the difference makes no difference; 
the idea conveyed is the same under either form. 
But here there is contrast not only of words but of 
sense. We should be able to tell very much more 
than we do now about the attitude of Jesus to¬ 
ward the economic conditions of life if we could 
be sure whether when He spoke of blessed poverty 
He was thinking of the lack of worldly goods or 
of the absence of religious pride among those 
whom He delighted to count as His friends. 

So likewise is there considerable spread of dis¬ 
tinction between what was meant by the Master if 
He said, “ The kingdom of God is among you,” 
and what He meant if He said, “ The kingdom of 
God is within you.” The first would give the 
kingdom a time mark; the second a character 
mark. It is the latter meaning which men of our 
day would rather cling to. But till the end of 
time no man in this world will know surely which 
was the sense the Lord had in mind. The un¬ 
certainty here, however, arises not from varying 
reports by different witnesses but from the am¬ 
biguity of the language in which the saying has 
been kept for us. Probably the Master’s meaning 
was entirety clear to those who heard Him say 
this thing in Plis native Aramaic. But the trans¬ 
lation into Greek brought obscurity because the 
translator blundered into a grammatical usage 
capable of two constructions. This confusion of 


THE MIRAGE OF INERRANCY 


75 


sense, however, could alter little the later 
Church’s apprehension of the character and mis¬ 
sion of Jesus; interesting therefore as it would be 
for us to learn just what Christ did say, who 
would dare to think that, simply for the satisfac¬ 
tion of our curiosity, the supervising Spirit would 
concern Himself to prevent or remedy so tiny a 
flaw in so great a story ? 

Among those who regard inerrancy as indis¬ 
pensable in an inspired Bible, it is customary, 
where seeming contradictions appear on the sur¬ 
face of Biblical passages, to try to maintain the 
principle by “ reconciling ” these discrepancies. 
This process consists in working out some theory 
of the circumstances under which it would be pos¬ 
sible for both diverse statements to be literally 
true. Much skillful conjecture has been spent on 
this means of justifying the accuracy of the Bible, 
and it cannot be denied that in numerous instances 
plausible explanations have been hit on; some of 
them may actually reconstruct from differing ac¬ 
counts the ampler details of what in fact did hap¬ 
pen. But far oftener the adjustment of one ac¬ 
count to another is accomplished by surmises so 
far fetched that no one would think of indulging 
them if a supposed necessity did not demand the 
reconciliation at all costs. 

No matter how successfully this interweaving 
of varied stories is carried out, however, it does 
not improve the case for the advocates of iner¬ 
rancy. If precise exactitude in details were a re¬ 
quired mark of a God-inspired writing, then ob- 


76 


THE MIRAGE OF INERRANCY 


viously it would be impossible to regard as in¬ 
spired the individual writings in which occur para¬ 
graphs that need to be thus “ reconciled ” before 
they give the right impression. Severally consid¬ 
ered, each unit on this assumption must give a 
wrong impression. And it is to be remembered 
that most of the sixty-six documents now bound 
together in our Bible were first put forth in in¬ 
dependent form, and their original readers could 
not have had opportunity to compare them with 
the other Bible writings with which they are now 
associated. The supposed clarification to-day pur¬ 
sued so diligently was therefore in the beginning 
impossible, and readers at that time were certainly 
led into opinions of fact which present-day recon¬ 
cilers would consider erroneous, because the data 
from parallel accounts, by which it is claimed that 
fuller facts are now made apparent, were not then 
available. 

Thus an early Christian who might have in hand 
only Mark’s Gospel would suppose that Jesus re¬ 
stored sight to only one blind man when He passed 
out of Jericho on His last journey to Jerusalem. 
Not till the believer read Matthew would he know 
that there were two blind men there, both of whom 
were blessed by the healing power of the Christ. 
And then after he got hold of the Gospel by Luke, 
he would be entirely uncertain whether the one 
man or the two men healed had met the Lord 
when He passed out of Jericho or when He was 
coming into the town. Similarly four persons who 
read respectively the four separate accounts of 


THE MIRAGE OF INERRANCY 


77 


Peter’s tragic denial of the Lord would have in 
mind four quite different groups of incidents. 
The best reconciling which the inerrancy dog¬ 
matists can do with this case is to infer that Peter 
actually denied the Lord seven times—which dis¬ 
agrees with what the Lord predicted and is con¬ 
trary to the impression which any one of the 
evangelists conveys by his individual story. 

Plainly, records that in minute matters of cir¬ 
cumstance are brought into accord only by rashly 
adventurous guessing—which, to say the least, is 
not itself inerrant—cannot depend for their value 
on that kind of microscopic precision which iner¬ 
rancy calls for. If God had ever intended to stake 
the reputation or the authority of the Bible on a 
superhuman accuracy in minor and incidental 
facts, He would certainly have taken care to make 
that extraordinary exactness an unmistakable phe¬ 
nomenon. There is no evidential value for in¬ 
spiration to be drawn from the sort of inerrancy 
which to a cursory reader is so little manifest that 
he thinks he sees quite the opposite—the same kind 
of harmless inexactitude that he would expect in 
all story-telling and history-writing by average 
honest men. But there is on the other hand a vast 
gain for faith and immense rest for troubled minds 
when the simple truth is recognized that in pro¬ 
viding for an inspired book of religion the in¬ 
spiring Spirit saw no need of working the gigantic 
miracle which would have made ordinary fallible 
men omniscient in minutiae. Who conceivably 
could be strengthened in faith toward the Lord 


78 


THE MIRAGE OF INERRANCY 


Christ by knowing surely whether it was at the 
east gate or the west gate of Jericho that Bar- 
timseus was roused to hope by the electric word, 
“ Jesus of Nazareth passeth by” ? 

Another imagination which has been invoked 
by the same dogma is still more futile—the hy¬ 
pothesis that although there are apparently irre¬ 
concilable discrepancies in the Holy Scriptures as 
we now possess them, there were no mistakes and 
no contradictions in the original manuscripts as 
the Bible authors penned them. All errors that 
can be traced in to-day’s Bible have resulted, ac¬ 
cording to this theory, from the blunders of copy¬ 
ists and translators through whose hands the book 
came down to us. It is passing strange that the 
architects of this conception cannot see that it is 
bound in the very nature of the case to fall and 
bury them in its ruins. If the book by which God 
conveys His law and Gospel to mankind must be 
historically inerrant in order to be religiously in¬ 
fallible, then on the hypothesis here outlined the 
revelation of God perished from the earth ages 
ago—being destroyed by the incompetence of those 
who transcribed it from one manuscript to another 
and rendered it out of its original languages into 
the tongues of the nations. 

The logic of this is that we to-day have no Bible 
at all to which any divine authority can be at¬ 
tributed. Who then was this God who could at 
the beginning inspire men to write with a miracu¬ 
lous accuracy but could do nothing afterward to 
control the errant liabilities of those other disciples 


THE MIRAGE OF INERRANCY 


79 


of His to whom He left the preservation of the 
Scriptures? Just on the score of a due respect to 
the sufficiency of God’s omnipotence, it is far more 
reverent, instead of supposing that inspiration was 
baffled thus, to believe that God never tried to 
abolish honest men’s fallibilities but was always 
content to reveal His truth through and by their 
natural human talents. 

There is a great maxim dear to the most just 
and most enlightened legal minds—a maxim 
drawn from ancient Rome, the mother of the 
world’s jurisprudence: “ The law cares not for 
trifles.” It is a maxim which theology ought to 
adopt in honour of the heavenly Father, whose 
infinite mind is the native home of law as well as 
of revelation, and whose love desires for mankind 
not petty securities within tight-closed corrals but 
abundant life along the wide ranges of a free uni¬ 
verse. “ God cares not for trifles.” Certainly it 
is an intellect childishly restricted which is able 
to imagine Him who “ upholdeth all things by the 
word of his power,” sitting in the central ruler- 
ship of the universe with concern in His thought 
about the possibility that Matthew, Mark, Luke 
and John would not get it straight whether Peter 
denied his Lord to two or only to one of the high 
priest’s serving maids. 

But God had charged Matthew, Mark, Luke and 
John to make known to the world the mighty fact 
that their Master came into the world to redeem 
sinners from the curse of sin—and to take care 
that they did that and to provide that their mes- 


80 


THE MIEAGE OF INERRANCY 


sage should never be lost from the hands of God’s 
children who needed that testimony to His love. 
His vastest powers have been none too great for 
the eternal God to employ. 

In making a Bible God made a book which like 
all the rest of His works is to be praised for what 
it is and not for what it is not. Paul was a soul 
so in touch with God that in this as in countless 
other things he caught the divine mood entirely. 
Paul, writing to Timothy his second epistle, in¬ 
cluded a definition of inspired Scripture which no 
creed since has ever equalled for either brevity, 
fullness or clarity. And he dallied with no such 
negative and speculative claim as “ The Scriptures 
contain no mistakes.” He struck for something 
far more positive and far more vital—something 
which experience could testify to with the million¬ 
fold force of a universal Christian response: 
“ Every Scripture inspired of God is profitable.” 
Yes, “ profitable,” effective for the religious ends 
it was designed for. There is the “ impregnable 
rock ” for Bible faith. Just as Jesus prescribed 
that the life of an individual disciple should be 
judged by its fruits, so is the Bible to be judged. 
And its fruits are demonstrative. 

“ No errors ”—a man could wrestle with that 
proposition for a century and not prove it; every 
logician indeed would warn him beforehand that 
a universal negative is unprovable. But “ profit¬ 
able ”—that he could prove at every Christian 
hearthstone, at every Christian altar. And there’s 
the true proof of inspiration. 


IX 


EDUCATION AND SYMBOLISM 


T HINKING of the Bible as a course of 
education prepared by the Father in 
heaven for the instruction of His chil¬ 
dren in the elder days of the race, detracts nothing 
from the permanent worth of the book, but does 
help to put a right value on certain passages often 
considered difficult to interpret. It surprises no 
one to find text-books for the primary grades of 
school differing, not only in contents but in peda¬ 
gogical method, from text-books designed for 
high school. If then the Bible comprises a long 
curriculum from primary to high school and be¬ 
yond, it cannot be thought strange that differences 
of quality and appeal distinguish portions of the 
Scriptures belonging to early stages of the world’s 
culture from portions originating in and designed 
for later days of more enlightenment. 

Had this natural and reasonable view of the 
Bible prevailed in the Christian mind of recent 
generations, the Church would never have been 
troubled by the imagination of a conflict between 
Genesis and geology. Nor would it now be dis¬ 
turbed by assertions that evolution as one of God’s 
working means of production cannot be believed 

Si 


82 


EDUCATION AND SYMBOLISM 


in without giving the lie to what the Bible says 
about creation. These needless antitheses have no 
basis whatever except the totally unfounded no¬ 
tion—the impossible notion, indeed—that this 
Genesis prologue contains everything that is ever 
to be told or learned about the beginnings of the 
material universe, this present earth and the race 
of mankind. Such a presumption ought to be 
contradicted instantly by the very scantness of the 
story. Can three pages of duodecimo print be a 
compendium of universal origins? It ought to be 
still more emphatically contradicted by any ob¬ 
servation whatever of the divine training of hu¬ 
man intelligence. 

When, pray tell us, did God ever make to man a 
gratuitous present of information which man 
could by any pains search out for himself? When, 
for that matter, did any wise teacher ever inform 
a student of what the student could discover by 
his own investigation? The pedagogy of earth 
has in this but learned the pedagogy which the 
Lord God has observed ever since He began to 
leach Adam in the kindergarten of time. Revela¬ 
tion He has always reserved for those secrets 
which are by their nature beyond the inquiries of 
the earthly mind. A blatant skeptic once an¬ 
nounced his find of indisputable proof that Jesus 
could not have been divine—Jesus went away 
from this world without telling men that they 
ought to use knives and forks at their meals. The 
proof in good common sense really runs the other 
way; if He had not been divine. He might have 


EDUCATION AND SYMBOLISM 


83 


thought it His mission to introduce knives and 
forks. Being divine, He was wise enough not to 
interfere with the slow processes by which the 
race was working out its own civilization. That 
was a minor matter in which the world could save 
itself without a heavenly intervention. Christ 
rendered His service on a plane that men could 
never reach without Him. 

The same economy and reserve are in Genesis. 
Most knowledge could wait till the human mind 
grew out of babyhood. All the age-long story in 
the rocks and all the cosmic panorama in the stars 
would at length come out; men would learn to 
read and to discern and in good time would know 
the marvellous truth of science, both geologic and 
astronomic. Indeed, in the primitive epoch of the 
Pentateuch how futile it would have been to de¬ 
velop the complete facts of creation for a tribe of 
just liberated slaves to read and use. What could 
the hordes gathered before Sinai have made out 
of a treatise on the flora of the carboniferous age 
or a discussion of the history of spiral nebulae? 
Were the earliest portions of the Bible of a na¬ 
ture like that, it would scarcely be effrontery to 
say that God could never have had anything to do 
with such ridiculously displaced literature. Moth¬ 
ers know enough to tell their small children child 
stories; God, with an untutored child race to in¬ 
struct, would surely be as wise. 

And so indeed He was. He put into Genesis a 
child story of creation—a story told in pictures 
and symbols such as children love. But it was a 


84 


EDUCATION AND SYMBOLISM 


true story—so true that to this day, when science 
has fashioned around it a sumptuous setting of 
golden knowledge, rich, varied, vast, this same 
brief story shines still like a jewel in the midst of 
all later discovery, glowingly lovelier than the staid 
prosings of the investigators, brilliant with the 
simple poetry of God’s pleasure in His own well 
wrought handiwork. And it tells of the universe 
all that man needed morally to know before he 
had learned enough to be his own explorer into 
the Creator’s mysteries. 

It tells the answer to the great first question of 
the opening mind of humanity: Who made all 
this? It tells too the guarantee of the Infinite to 
the first terrifying skepticism that comes to plague 
that opening mind; no matter what the cynical 
look of things may be, “ God saw everything that 
he had made and, behold, it was very good.” 
Out of Genesis its peasant readers even learned 
something of that divine combination of power 
and patience which is yet the wonder of those who 
seek to know the ways of the Lord—able with His 
power to accomplish all at a word, yet willing to 
build up His creation by the patient addition of 
one to one, even as a schoolboy adds up a tedious 
sum. 

The Genesis manuscript alone was therefore 
enough to let a man know that he was in God’s 
world and that he himself bore marks of relation¬ 
ship to God that set him apart from all living 
creatures by whom he found himself surrounded. 
That was not sufficient to make him a scientist 


EDUCATION AND SYMBOLISM 


85 


but it amply sufficed to make him a worshipper— 
which in this Bible introduction was certainly the 
guiding object of inspiration. And the wonder of 
Genesis—the sheer, open fact which a denier of 
inspiration may struggle long to account for in 
any way consistent with his denial—is that these 
primeval chapters, innocent of even a suspicion of 
modern science, to-day commingle freely with all 
which that science has taught about the constitu¬ 
tion of man and the universe and lose no dignity 
nor suffer any stultification in the contact. 

A cosmology now holds sway over men's 
thought totally different from that which pre¬ 
vailed when Genesis was put into the Bible; a new 
survey of creation has substituted uncounted mil¬ 
lions of years for this story’s naive six days; all 
things have been reclassified and realigned in the 
natural world; and yet in the simplicity of a great 
insight the Mosaic account of creation stands up to 
command the assent of mankind to its two pin¬ 
nacle affirmations: “ In the beginning God created 
the heavens and the earth,” and at the end of the 
work for the crown of the labour He “ created 
man in his own image ” and “ breathed into his 
nostrils the breath of life and man became a liv¬ 
ing soul.” Some science may indeed doubt that, 
but the world believes it. And naught but divine 
inspiration could triumph over the changes of cen¬ 
turies like that. God taught His earliest children 
truth, and truth it still abides. 

The vindication of the third chapter of Genesis 
—the story of man’s fall—is equally triumphant. 


86 


EDUCATION AND SYMBOLISM 


The only pity is that some of the Bible’s stanchest 
champions are unaware of the victory and con¬ 
sider that there was a great defeat suffered when 
the ancient account of the fall of man met the 
latter-day conception of social as well as organic 
evolution. To admit this, however, is naturalizing 
in the Church an ignorance of moral philosophy 
which may possibly be excusable among scientists 
but is certainly not befitting to theologians. It is 
said that evolution makes it foolishness to talk of 
the fall of man. On the contrary evolution may 
be fairly said to confirm the fall of man. The 
only thing that may have been invalidated by the 
impact of evolution on the Bible at this point is 
the name which the Church has given to the 
tragedy of Adam’s sin—the “ fall.” And that’s 
no loss, for the Bible never uses any such term 
about the transgression in Eden, and the Church 
would better forget it. 

Wherever the two creation chapters of Genesis 
made any man realize his obligation to God as 
Creator and Preserver, the next question inevi¬ 
table must have been why it was so hard to live 
up to that obligation. Why was a man always 
sinning? There arose another problem that man 
could never work out for himself. So the inspir¬ 
ing Spirit prepared the third chapter to give an¬ 
swer—a primary answer indeed but an everlasting 
one—to that question. By a tale so real to the 
experience of humanity that its incidents might 
have been duplicated a thousand times in the sub¬ 
stance of the situation, it was shown that God 


EDUCATION AND SYMBOLISM 


87 


leaves it to man to make his own decision whether 
in this world he will obey or rebel. Until man 
realizes, however, that this is a choice for him to 
make, he is not a moral creature; in the graphic 
language of this record, he knows neither good 
nor evil. 

Evolution agrees thoroughly that from such in¬ 
fantile innocency—the irresponsibility of the 
morally neutral animal—man somewhere passed 
into the morally responsible realm where con¬ 
science distinguishes the right from the wrong and 
affirms the duty to do right. It cannot guess, 
though, where that momentous change occurred 
or how. Genesis tells. God laid on humanity a 
test to see if humanity would take life or death 
—obedience necessarily being life when the com¬ 
mands to be obeyed were the laws of the Ruler 
of the universe. But the tragedy was that hu¬ 
manity chose death—to wit, disobedience. That 
was the “ fall.” Yet even then man was at the 
door of a greater life—beginning an evolution to 
better things. God said so then and there. That 
“ serpent ” of sin that had wrought all the evil 
of this terrible drama was yet to be crushed by the 
struggling descendants of erring Eve—especially 
by One destined to be stronger at the last than the 
“ strong man ” of wickedness. 

The ancient sinner who read that chapter un¬ 
doubtedly learned from it what sin was. He 
learned why its hold on his heart gripped so un- 
shakably. But far better, he understood that it 
was worth his while to fight for freedom because 


88 


EDUCATION AND SYMBOLISM 


God had foretold the destruction of the power of 
sin. Could human genius without a divine 
prompting have written so divinely adequate a 
word for just that page of immortal counsel at 
just that crisis in the spiritual education of man¬ 
kind? No; it would be little risk to stake the 
whole case for the reality of Bible inspiration on 
that Eden story—provided always, however, that 
the spiritual light shining from it is what is 
thought of, and that contentious dispute whether 
the story is to be called history or allegory is rec¬ 
ognized as unbecoming among those who alike at¬ 
tribute its conception to God. The narrative may 
in reality be either the one or the other without 
the need of deciding which—the important thing 
is that it is certainly the truth. 

The difficulty felt by so many modern Christians 
in accepting allegory as an inspired vehicle of 
God’s truth is strictly an occidental difficulty. No 
oriental would feel it. It is a hindrance imposed 
on faith by the unimaginative matter-of-factness 
that is more or less a characteristic of the Anglo- 
Saxon mind everywhere and especially of that 
strain in Anglo-Saxondom which draws inherit¬ 
ance from the rigid and literal Puritans. To them 
the exercise of mental invention to create a tale 
of what never happened on sea or land was a will¬ 
ful excursion into the realm of that evil one who 
was a liar from the beginning. Of course, they 
could not dream of such piece of wicked imperti¬ 
nence existing within the covers of the Bible. 

But happily in regard to secular literature even 


EDUCATION AND SYMBOLISM 


89 


the strictest of Puritans in our day appreciate the 
possibility that fiction, produced by an artist capa¬ 
ble of broadly depicting living human types in 
the actors of his plot, may draw a picture really 
more true to life than any isolated “ fact story ” 
of a few real individuals. Fiction can mass its 
characters under the author’s generalship for a far 
more telling effect. And as for the realism of the 
result, there are the soundest reasons for saying 
that a student will learn more of the actual life of 
England in the time of Richard the Lion-Heart 
from the imaginative story of “ Ivanhoe ” than 
from any extant history of that period. 

Moreover, it is by no means unusual for fictional 
stories to bring about irresistible moral arouse- 
ment among a people who have woefully long 
dallied with public evils. Did not Dickens’s 
“ Oliver Twist ” count powerfully to ameliorate 
the horrors of English workhouses; his “Nicho¬ 
las Nickleby ” to improve the treatment of Eng¬ 
lish schoolboys? And would anybody deny that 
Harriet Beecher Stowe’s “ Uncle Tom’s Cabin ” 
was a mighty agency toward the emancipation of 
American slaves? Is it possible then for the 
Christian, who must believe that the good works 
of the world are never wrought in the absence of 
God, to reject the art of fiction as an unworthy 
instrument for God to employ in the hands of an 
author who has “ let his soul for truth’s sake go 
abroad”? And from that standpoint what hin¬ 
drance can forbid him to step over to the scarcely 
more venturesome thought that God might (did 


90 


EDUCATION AND SYMBOLISM 


He but choose) inspire works of fiction for His 
great standard volume of world religion? 

The suggestion that the books named for Daniel 
and Jonah are not perhaps historical has awakened 
embittered commotion at various times in the 
Church of Christ because the considerations just 
proposed have not been common to the thought of 
contemporary Christians. The dry and flat for¬ 
mula, “The Bible is truth; anything else than literal 
history is a lie; therefore there can be nothing but 
literal history in the Bible/’ has been too hastily 
clamped down on the discussion. There is more 
than that to say. The alternative to strict history 
is not a “ pack of lies ” but honest historical fiction 
—a form of the highest literary honour to-day 
and a type of writing esteemed in nearly all ages 
for the lofty genius required to lift it to success. 

If a prophet of Israel, at some time later than 
the epoch at which Jonah or Daniel flourished, 
was persuaded that he could write for his people 
a message associated with the famous name of one 
or the other of these men, which by reason of that 
association would attract a larger reading, is there 
anybody who will maintain that it was a wicked 
and deceitful intent? None certainly of that time 
who read the message would be deceived by it; its 
fictional character would be understood as readily 
as Americans understand that “ Hugh Wynne, 
Free Quaker,” for example, is not a historical 
memoir of George Washington. But the great 
name of a remembered hero would give an appeal 
to the book and more would read, heed and medi- 


EDUCATION AND SYMBOLISM 


91 


tate. And the vividness of romance then as to¬ 
day would intensify the impression conveyed. 

Then “ who hath known the mind of the Lord 
that he should instruct him ” that historical novels, 
no matter how full of the great and abiding ideas 
of religion, must never be admitted to the canon of 
Scriptures? Who presents himself so to inform 
the Bible’s infinite Compiler? There are crystal- 
clear spiritual elements in both Jonah and Daniel 
which, as well as human judgment may guess, a 
book of divine things could not omit without loss. 
There is Jonah’s moving exposition of God’s uni¬ 
versal love—remarkable precursor of the supreme 
note of the Christian Gospel. Daniel too has ideals 
of fidelity to conscience which expand the con¬ 
scientious soul with the most heroic motives, 
whether those ideals are drawn from the great 
mind that penned the book or from great charac¬ 
ters there commemorated who suffered heroically 
in the flesh. God needed both those writings. 
Should a question of mere literary form rule them 
out? 

To say these things is not to make argument 
either for or against the historicity of the two 
productions thus named. It is an argument that 
if they were fictional, they would still have just as 
good title to the rating of inspired documents. 
And it may be added that not their miracles but 
their failure to fit into any known historical situ¬ 
ation is the obstacle which prevents so many Bible 
students from classifying them with history. The 
highest living authority who holds to Daniel as a 


92 


EDUCATION AND SYMBOLISM 


historical record seems to admit that such a posi¬ 
tion can be preserved for it only by supposing 
that the Darius who cast Daniel into the lions’ den 
was a local proconsul ruling temporarily in behalf 
of the conquering Cyrus over the city and district 
of Babylon alone. Yet the lordly manner in which 
Darius at the end of the chapter wrote to “ all the 
peoples, nations and languages that dwell in all the 
earth ” sounds very little as if he were aware of 
having the mighty Cyrus or any other potentate 
as overlord. 

Happily, however, there is one point where oc¬ 
cidental and oriental believers are able to join in 
equal recognition of the use of symbolic fiction in 
the Bible. That luminous meeting ground is the 
parables of Jesus. There may have been a time 
when certain Bible-readers concerned themselves 
to speculate where and when the prodigal son and 
his father lived and to what far country the former 
wandered away. But that is long past now. It 
satisfies all of us, conservatives and liberals, that 
these forever memorable figures lived in the pic¬ 
turesque mind of Jesus Christ, and from thence 
they issued into an undying reality—more actual 
to-day in the immortality of their story setting 
than all the princes and emperors who ever reigned 
on the thrones of all the world. There may or 
there may not have been a man in history who sold 
all that he had in order to buy a pearl of great 
price. But there is such a man now; he has lived 
from the day that Jesus Christ named him. If 
any man says that a piece of imagination can never 


EDUCATION AND SYMBOLISM 


93 


be inspired enough for a place in the Bible, the 
mere mention of the parables of Jesus is all the 
answer needful. 

Then there is another realm of symbolism in the 
Scriptures which all schools of Bible students 
would be equally loath to deny. Surely there are 
none to maintain that the Bible’s descriptions of 
the architecture and occupations of heaven are 
literal forecasts of the joys which await the re¬ 
deemed in the immortal life. How poor would be 
a heavenly city which could be described in guide¬ 
book fashion within the compass of an earth-born 
and earth-bound language. All our tongues are 
weighted down with leaden words that have all 
been necessarily cast in physical moulds. For 
things that exist in spiritual actuality independent 
of the familiar forms of matter we have slight 
imagination and no vocabulary. God’s book can¬ 
not tell us more than our pens and tongues can 
say. He speaks perforce of golden streets and 
jewelled walls and rivers of the water of life. 
There are no exacter words. But we shall none 
of us feel cheated if we find none of these things 
when God brings us to that “ place of his abode.” 
If the gold and precious stones are not there, it 
will be plain to us that they served on earth well 
and truthfully as symbols of glories far beyond 
our fleshly ken. And we shall be thankful to God 
that He did put symbols into His book. 

Meanwhile, here in the present life, let us try 
to do the Bible the constant justice of remember¬ 
ing the picturesqueness of the oriental mind, and 


94 


EDUCATION AND SYMBOLISM 


determinedly resist our tendency to interpret the 
book—wholly of oriental origin—as if it had been 
produced by Americans in our own pragmatic and 
factual age. Were it not so solemn a folly per¬ 
petrated in premises of such profound seriousness, 
it would be grotesque to see the Yankee all-busi¬ 
ness intellect analyzing the delicate dream-fabrics 
of eastern imagery with the same literalness that it 
handles a column of market reports. No doubt 
there have at times risen even in the west poetizers 
who, if allowed to go on unhindered, would have 
dissipated the meat of the Lord Christ’s teachings 
into an ethereal ambrosia quite useless for “ human 
nature’s daily food.” And, of course, we cannot 
endure to have Christ vapourized into misty fancy. 
But far oftener the mischief has been done in quite 
the opposite way when ideals that were meant to 
lift souls into the pure air of high heaven have 
been chained down to pace the earth by a profitless 
and deceiving road of unimaginative ritual. 

This is what in the worship of a large part of 
the Church has totally ruined the great spiritual 
significance of those two wonderful metaphors, 
“ This is my body ” and “ This is my blood,” and 
in the practical Christian life has reduced to an 
idle, prating folly the Lord’s canny and pungent 
proverb: “ Give to every one who asketh thee.” 
It is a sorry blunder, of course, to turn a literal 
word of Scripture into a figure of speech. But it 
is a blunder equally ill and much more frequent to 
take a proverb, an epigram, a symbol, a picture 
phrase, a sparkling adventure in poetic fancy, and 


EDUCATION AND SYMBOLISM 


95 


treat it like a formula in geometry or a paragraph 
of directions from a mail order catalogue. Before 
an occidental reads this oriental book, he ought to 
offer a specially humble and fervent prayer for the 
resurrection and sanctifying of all the poetic im¬ 
agination latent in him. And especially should he 
beware, if he does not find the petition 
abundantly answered as he traverses prior parts 
of Scripture, of invading the book of the Revela¬ 
tion. Only a poet is fit to read the Bible’s final 
writing. 


X 


THE MULTIPLEXITY OF DOCTRINE 


T HE demand for an inerrant Bible, as we 
have said, is an artificial stipulation which 
men would impose on the Spirit who has 
inspired the Scriptures but which gets no recogni¬ 
tion whatever within the Scriptures themselves. 
The Bible is nowhere a self-conscious book, and 
only once does there come to the surface anything 
which can be deemed an inspired definition of in¬ 
spiration—the verses 2 Timothy 3: 16, 17, which 
on an earlier page have already been referred to: 
“ Every Scripture inspired of God is also profitable 
for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for in¬ 
struction which is in righteousness, that the man 
of God may be complete, furnished completely 
unto every good work.” 

It is indeed sometimes alleged that this wording 
of this passage—the translation of the American 
revisers—has been weakened from the strong sense 
of the King James version; some have even said 
that it was purposely weakened. The accusation 
is idle, because the language of the revision is just 
as inclusive and emphatic as the terms of the old 
version. Nevertheless, in order that the full force 
of the earlier rendering may be before the eyes of 

96 


THE MULTIPLEXITY OF DOCTRINE 97 


those who prefer it, let that also be repeated: “ All 
Scripture is given by inspiration of God and is 
profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, 
for instruction in righteousness, that the man of 
God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all 
good works.” 

Here then is the Bible’s standard description of 
its own qualities, and here surely, if from the 
Bible viewpoint a preternatural exactness was es¬ 
sential to inspired literature, there would have 
been some tangible hint of that characteristic. In¬ 
stead the outlook of the apostle—himself an un¬ 
doubted agent of divine inspiration—was entirely 
in another direction. Paul had his eyes on the 
moral dynamic of the book—its spiritual vitality. 
That dynamic he had himself felt in the deepest 
impulses of his own ministry. He had seen its 
efficiency demonstrated by the consecration and 
holiness of many fellow Christians who loved the 
book and lived by it. On both accounts he was so 
convinced of the divine power flowing out from 
the Holy Scriptures that he felt no need to seek 
other grounds for commending it to the confidence 
of men. Had some one suggested to him that the 
written word of God might be further attested by 
asserting that, even in its secular allusions, it was 
clear from the ordinary misunderstandings and 
blunders of humanity, he would have been scarcely 
interested even if he had believed the claim to be 
correct. He knew so many other things about the 
Bible infinitely more significant. 

How then does it come that Protestantism at 


98 THE MULTIPLEXITY OF DOCTRINE 


large has laid so tremendous a weight on merely 
verbal and factual inerrancy in the Bible? Why 
does a dogma that is invisible in the Bible itself 
bulk so large in the orthodox defense of the Bible? 
The explanation is to be found in religious anxi¬ 
eties which the Protestant mind shares with the 
Roman Catholic mind but which it seeks to in¬ 
trench in a much different refuge. The instinct 
of each—probably it would not be too much to 
say, the universal instinct of men—is for certainty 
in religion. On so measureless and so profound 
an interest people feel they cannot afford to en¬ 
dure the least doubtful hazard; they must know. 
The proverb which bids men be sure they are right 
before they go ahead, is not sufficient for this case; 
in living life, a man has to go ahead whether he is 
ready or not; he cannot wait until he has reasoned 
through the case. Therefore if religion has any 
help for him at all, he expects it to speak at once 
and decisively. He will be content with nothing 
misty and fluctuating; he wants positive and un¬ 
disputed surety. 

The Roman believer is persuaded that he has 
just this certainty to answer all his questions. 
What the priest says, repeating what the pope says, 
is his reliance; pope and priest claim to know the 
exact truth about religion, and whatever they may 
tell him he receives as the end of all controversy— 
the supreme decision which forbids further query. 
It is an easy disposal of doubt's inveterate uneasi¬ 
ness. Yet the Protestant Christian rightly feels 
all this an incredible supposition—that perfect 


THE MULTIPLEXITY OF DOCTRINE 99 


knowledge of every Christian doctrine should be 
given solely to one old man shut away in the palace 
prison of the Vatican, and that the reading and 
thinking and praying of all other good men in all 
the world should count for nothing at all in com¬ 
parison or contrast with the pope’s ipse dixit. It 
is quite too much for a free soul to accept. Still 
the Protestant too wants that same kind of cer¬ 
tainty. Where shall he find it? Away from the 
pope and from all other seers and preachers and 
saints as well—from every and any voice of man 
—he turns to the unchanging record and testi¬ 
mony of the Bible. “ Here is God’s word,” he 
says; “ I rest here.” 

It is the best of all resting places undoubtedly. 
We have already borne witness to the faith that 
no living soul who truly relies on Holy Scripture 
as his “ man of counsel ” will fail to please God 
or miss meeting the Saviour. But it is another 
question entirely whether the desire of the 
heavenly Father is, by means of either pope or 
Bible, to eliminate diversities of faith from among 
His disciples—to bring them all into one uniform 
line of thinking, one single consensus of theology. 

To say as much as this will, of course, seem to 
many like denying an axiom of mathematics. It 
is quite as likely to be a Protestant as a Catholic 
who will argue: “It stands to reason that there 
is only one truth about any subject. Whatever 
opinion men may have on that subject which does 
not coincide with that one truth must necessarily 
be a wrong opinion. And on such an important 


100 THE MULTIPLEXITY OF DOCTKINE 


matter as the truth about himself and the human 
soul it is certain that God would not leave any¬ 
body to error. We simply must believe that some¬ 
where He has made it possible for us to find and 
know the absolute unmistaken facts of religion/' 
All this may be heard said as emphatically in 
evangelical as in papal circles, with only a final 
difference about where that indubitable truth is to 
be found—in the book or in the Church. 

But again it must be observed that the adequate 
conclusion of the whole matter is not quite so sim¬ 
ple as everyday home-made logic would induce us 
to believe. An open-and-shut antithesis between 
right opinion and wrong opinion may cover the 
ground for a question of scientific fact (though 
not always even there), but a question of the 
eternal things which fill earth and sky and all the 
life of man may not be so easily measured. It 
would be a bold proposition indeed to maintain 
that any thought which comes within the yea-and- 
nay of one human brain is the whole unabridged 
truth about any act of God or any responsibility 
of man. The character and being of God and the 
salvation of humankind are still vaster themes; 
on these a fully balanced understanding is even 
less likely to be achieved inside any single mind 
in this world. 

In another chapter we have studied how the di¬ 
vine Editor in the Bible secured a comprehensive 
presentation of various elements of Christian faith 
by collating a variety of views from different au¬ 
thors, and so in a doctrinal symposium, as it were, 


THE MULTIPLEXITY OF DOCTRINE 101 


drawing a large circle to include each wide and 
expansive principle of life. By the same token it 
often requires numerous minds vibrating in a long 
gamut of opinions to sound out to the world the 
full chords of God’s entire truth. The loftiest 
note and the lowest in such an instance may seem 
distressingly out of harmony; dogmatists may 
proclaim them in hopeless contradiction—and yet 
in the swelling symphony of God’s messages each 
may be equally needful for the divinest music. 
Truth is less often this or that than this and that. 

If one will but consider the basic obligation of 
the loyal Christian disciple to take the Bible as it 
is for what it is, he will certainly be constrained 
to yield assent to this proposition of a multifarious 
theology which God purposes to convey through 
a multifarious Bible. The opposite conception of 
one single-strand line of doctrine, drawn unde¬ 
flected and unduplicated from the beginning of the 
Old Testament to the end of the New, from which 
only willfulness or blindness can occasion depar¬ 
ture—from which any departure whatsoever is 
necessarily a crazy plunge into mental confusion 
and moral rebellion—will simply not stand up in 
the presence of any honest study of the book that 

God actuallv made. 

* 

In fact, the dogmatist who says that the Bible 
was intended to teach just the creedal system 
which his predilections have derived from it and 
extinguish every other mode of thought, is verging 
dangerously close to a sacrilege—for he is in ef¬ 
fect saying that the Lord attempted something 


102 THE MULTIPLEXITY OP DOCTBINE 


which He obviously did not succeed in accomplish¬ 
ing. Is not that an impiety? Certainly other 
modes of thought are not extinguished. They 
multiply among the Bible’s most devoted readers. 
If an all-prevailing uniformity of belief in the 
Church were the object in view when the Scrip¬ 
tures were brought into being, it surely could not 
have been beyond the divine capacity to produce 
a book immensely better suited to that end. For 
that result the Bible should have been much less 
various, much more systematic, much more logical, 
much more rigid. To multiply a single pattern 
anywhere, one must see to having an inflexible 
mould. 

Is not then the reverential attitude that which 
says that since God did not by the Scriptures sup¬ 
press differences in the religious beliefs of Bible 
students, He must be supposed to favour rather 
than deprecate those diversities? If He wanted 
an unvarying creed and an undiversified polity 
throughout His Church, there is certainly enough 
loyalty abroad among His people to secure what 
the Master wants. Inasmuch then as a perfect 
sameness is not secured, even where men heartily 
agree to take the Bible in its unsophisticated sim¬ 
plicity as the only criterion for either creed or 
polity, it can only be inferred as a practical judg¬ 
ment on the situation that the Lord of the Church 
is not interested in sameness. Plenty of proof is 
evident that the Creator loves variety in nature; 
why not in faith and love and worship and spir¬ 
itual experience ? 


THE MULTIPLEXITY OF DOCTRINE 103 


There are those who are very sure that the Fa¬ 
ther above is not satisfied to have His household 
on earth ruled over by any arrangement which 
does net include a hierarchy of bishops. On the 
other hand, there are a multitude of no doubt 
equally good and faithful souls who are fully per¬ 
suaded that bishops are an abomination to the 
Lord and it is a defeat of some eternal good pur¬ 
pose in the universe if anybody rises higher in 
authority within the Church than the presbyters. 
And both these parties in all sincerity appeal to the 
same Scriptures to sustain their mutually exclusive 
claims. Each side is amazed that the other should 
think the Bible can be interpreted to such incredi¬ 
ble conclusions. In the doctrinal field, similarly, 
Baptists and Disciples insist that nothing is plainer 
than that the New Testament prescribes immersion 
as the only form by which baptism can be baptism. 
Practically all others of the greater Protestant de¬ 
nominations hold that nothing can be plainer in 
the records than the fact that no form was pre¬ 
scribed for the rite and several different forms 
were used in apostolic times as circumstances 
might happen to make most convenient. 

These disputations look tragic except in the light 
which makes their ponderous earnestness absurd 
—the realization that the God who planned and 
brought together the contents of the Bible cannot 
possibly have cared much about either of these 
fiercelv debated issues or He would have taken 
effective pains to settle them long ago before they 
began. Does any Episcopalian really believe that 


104 THE MTJLTIPLEXITY OF DOCTKINE 


the Infinite One, if in fact He considered it re¬ 
quisite for His Church on earth to be forever and 
only under the governance of lord bishops, would 
not have been able to say so in terms that not even 
obstinate Presbyterians could dare to gainsay ? 
Or if in truth no disciple of the Master might be 
considered to be baptized unless he had been cov¬ 
ered head and foot with water, and every disciple 
must needs be so baptized, would not Jesus have 
spoken the few words required to make the matter 
plain even to men who do not possess Greek lexi¬ 
cons and are unable to consult the alleged “ schol¬ 
arship of the world ” ? 

The most outstanding wonder of modern Chris¬ 
tianity is the amazing spiritual reaction which per¬ 
mits theologians and ecclesiastics to read a book 
of such broad and swinging freedom, such un¬ 
staled and exuberant variety, as the Bible exhibits, 
and come away gloating over a handful of short, 
tough tethers twisted out of a verse here and a 
verse there, by which they propose to tie up men 
to a few stubby peculiarities claimed to be essential 
to religion, if not the sum of it. Why don’t they 
take the road to the open heights instead of back 
to the hitching posts? Was Jesus ever tethered to 
a hitching post ? 

Of course, the greatest enrichments of theology 
have always been attained by the final consent of 
men to solve such disputes as we have spoken of 
by merging the truths of both contentions. The 
patristic Church achieved such a victory when it 
resolutely refused to accept the dilemma thrust 


THE MULTIPLEXITY OF DOCTRINE 105 


upon it by those who would pronounce the Master 
all divine and those who persisted that He should 
be called only human. The Church took from 
both pleas and affirmed the great composite faith 
that He was both human and divine, and so set its 
seal to the only never-failing doctrine of salvation 
by “ a great High Priest who hath passed through 
the heavens ” and yet “ hath been in all points 
tempted like as we are.” By that act of joining 
what the less understanding would have disjoined, 
the fathers saved to the Church of Christ the mes¬ 
sage out of which has gone forth all the evangel¬ 
ical power which it has wielded in any age. Quite 
similarly in very recent days comprehensive Chris¬ 
tian preachers have put an end to centuries of 
rivalry between Arminianism and Calvinism by 
proclaiming them in unison as conjoint halves of 
a single truth. And presently the now current 
controversy between liberals and conservatives 
over progressive or static theology will be set at 
rest by the discovery that the Bible harmoniously 
includes both. 

As fast as there comes a general recognition of 
the hospitality with which the Bible entertains 
together many varied ideas that the creeds put in 
opposition, there must follow a revision of what 
is understood by designating the Scriptures as a 
“ standard of doctrine.” The idea which now pre¬ 
vails would set up the sacred book as a sort of 
defining dictionary from which the only allowable 
sense for each doctrine in a Christian’s creed 
might be drawn with an authority strong enough 



106 THE MULTIPLEXITY OF DOCTRINE 


to settle and end all discussion. As we have seen, 
the book is in reality ill adapted for that kind of 
thing, and the only rational conclusion is that it 
was never intended for it. 

Yet the Bible is none the less a “ standard of 
doctrine ”—but rather in the way of a touchstone 
than as a measuring stick. It can’t be pretended 
that the Bible contains all the truth in the universe, 
even about religious matters. But it does contain 
a great copious sample of the truth out of God’s 
deepest and most eternal vein, and it serves and 
will always serve to judge the genuineness of 
whatever else in man’s philosophizing and in man’s 
experience may turn up in the guise of claimed-to- 
be wisdom. Let it all be brought in and compared; 
if it agrees with the fiber, texture, structure, of 
the Bible’s highest and final teachings, let it be 
called honest goods. But if it disagrees, then out 
with the stuff; it is but shoddy after all. 

Moreover, the Bible stands impregnable as re¬ 
minder and indeed as demonstration that truth 
has an existence, an objective existence, all its own. 
Constantly through the ages the temptation has re¬ 
turned on men to speculate with the suspicion that 
the only reason for calling anything true is the cir¬ 
cumstance that people have somehow come to im¬ 
agine it true. The natural sequence is the sugges¬ 
tion that morals and justice likewise derive from 
the same kind of human tradition and consent. 
But men who read the Bible have the best defense 
against that temptation. Through the clear eyes 
of Scripture writers the Christian sees the Throne 


THE MULTIPLEXITY OF DOCTKINE 107 

Set eternally in the midst of the universe and 
knows that truth and right issue forth from the 
ultimate source of all reality—the pledge of every 
basic fact—the infinite being of God. 

With this assurance the journey becomes safe 
which so many private believers and so many ac¬ 
credited theologians as well fear to venture on. 
The greatest practical defect of the theologies 
which seminaries and pulpits promulgate is the 
fear manifest in all of them to put the weight on 
Christian experience which the Bible puts on it. 
The invariable answer to every appeal for more 
stress on the manner in which the Scriptures are 
validated by the spiritual response of those that 
read them, is a warning that any such emphasis 
on the reactions of individual believers will thrust 
the Church into a chaos of as many different the¬ 
ologies as it has Bible-reading members. But the 
response betrays a fear that the Bible confounds 
openly. Do the objectors imagine that the Bible 
itself is to be dissolved into an airy phantom com¬ 
pounded of the impressions that form and reform 
as its students turn its pages? Let them dismiss 
their apprehension. The Bible is a solid not so 
easily dissolved. The Bible remains as immovable 
as its God, and ten thousand years hence, if the 
world endures so long, it will mark the unshaken 
foundations of righteousness as clearly as to-day. 
And men will lay out their lives from the base-line 
of its unchanged data on how to serve their Maker 
and their fellow men. 

But all this should not obscure the one means 


108 THE MULTIPLEXITY OF DOCTKINE 


by which the Bible is able to assert any governing 
power over any man’s actual living conduct—the 
one and only means also by which any man is 
convinced that it brings him a trustworthy mes¬ 
sage from his Maker. It is the same secret of the 
sway of the Holy Scriptures over men in Church 
and in world which will still explain the book’s 
vitality when that ten thousand years to come have 
been absorbed in history. This secret is the mystic 
fact, which numberless generations and all sorts 
and conditions of Christians have found realistic 
beyond all telling, that when one with earnest mind 
reads the Bible, something within begins soon to 
say, “ That’s true, and that means me.” And that 
fact is matched and clinched by the other certainty 
to which can be brought the testimony of multi¬ 
tudes whom no man can number—the testimony 
that when a man with good faith takes up these 
promises and commands which so surely mean 
him, and seeks to live by them, he soon returns 
saying, “ I have tried these things out, and they 
come true; in experience they prove themselves 
completely.” j j 

Men obey the Bible because it imperiously calls 
to what is deepest in the consciousness—even in 
the sub-consciousness—of their souls. A man 
reads, “ The Lord is my shepherd,” and he knows 
he needs a shepherd, and he trusts the Lord as a 
shepherd, and soon his neighbours hear him sing¬ 
ing, “ I shall not want.” And all this is because 
in very deed the Spirit of God dwells in the book. 
It is not only that the Spirit once inspired the 


THE MULTIPLEXITY OF DOCTEINE 109 


Bible. To-day as ever He—in the present tense— 
inspires it. And it is He who, as Christians read 
it, allots to each man his portion. No man has 
quite a whole Bible for his own. He is richest 
who has most of it, but no one is poor who has 
any. The Spirit gives each Christian his part, and 
as the man’s soul grows, he is let into a larger and 
richer holding. So each gets his own Bible not 
because a council decreed it authoritative nor be¬ 
cause a Church has demanded that men call it in¬ 
fallible, but because he can tell what it has done 
for him and what it has made him do for God. 

This interpretation of the Scriptures by and 
through the life tests applied by the individual 
Christian soul is the more appropriate to their 
character and contents because they are themselves 
in so very large part the records of individual ex¬ 
perience in loving God, trusting God, doing His 
will and enjoying the fullness of His providence 
and redemption. Extensive portions of the Bible 
are of course occupied with the enunciation and 
discussion of general principles in religion. But an 
even greater portion consists of the petitions, the 
praises and the pious reflections of men who are 
telling from their hearts what life has meant to 
them personally—what cries for help its trials have 
extorted from them, what responses God has 
granted them in the midst of hard duty and strong 
struggles, and what calm of faith they have come 
to as they fared forward in the midst of opposi¬ 
tion and perils. 

It is true indeed that these recitals of fears and 


110 THE MULTXPLEXITY OF DOCTRINE 


triumphs are sometimes wrenched from their real 
significance and made into blind puzzles for the 
devout by an unadvised exegesis which treats as a 
universal generalization what is only the testimony 
of this or that saint to his own experience of the 
world. The late Dr. A. Woodruff Halsey used to 
tell how, as he read from the Bible to his saintly 
mother in his boyhood, she intervened when he 
came to that verse in the thirty-seventh Psalm 
which says: “ I have been young and now am old; 
yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken nor his 
seed begging bread. ,, “ Stop there, Woody,” she 
cried; “ I have.” And the good Christian lady 
was not disputing inspiration, either; she was sim¬ 
ply with admirably unconventional candour rec¬ 
ognizing the utterance for exactly what inspira¬ 
tion presented it—one certain psalmist’s own ob¬ 
servation of God’s care over His people. Mrs. 
Halsey’s observation happened to be different, and 
it was neither irreverent nor skeptical for her to 
say so. 

One reads likewise in the ninety-first Psalm an¬ 
other psalmist’s assurance in the midst of some 
great plague that the pestilence would not be per¬ 
mitted to smite his life to destroy it. No doubt 
his confidence in the special providence of such 
protection was fulfilled for him—the psalm would 
scarcely have been preserved otherwise. Yet its 
appearance in the Bible is no guarantee that all 
other God-fearing men will be delivered from 
death in any and every peril that may happen to 
overtake them. Every man’s times are in the 


THE MULTIPLEXXTY OF DOCTRINE 111 


hand of a loving Lord, and there are no guaran¬ 
tees to any man except that if he does his best for 
God, God will do what is best for him. 

None the less these tributes of trust and praise 
which holy men of old have been prompted out of 
their own private experience of God’s goodness to 
render to Him for all His mercies, have their 
rightful and honoured place in the book by which 
God is pleased to reveal His ways and purposes to 
mankind. They testify, not to any mechanical 
contrivance by which God grinds out good things 
to men from the wheels and cogs of an irrespective 
fate, but to the everlasting kindliness with which 
He watches over each of His children and appor¬ 
tions to each what shall best reward his deserv¬ 
ings, best discipline his shortcomings and bring 
him most securely to the particular rounding out 
of life that best fulfills the particular fitness of his 
particular soul. 

Especially do these and a hundred other pas¬ 
sages testify to the great and comprehensive fact 
that God’s allotments to the righteous are allot¬ 
ments of prosperity and gladness many times 
oftener than He apportions the allotments of woe 
and sorrow, to which bear witness other Biblical 
transcripts of Christian experience equally inspired 
because equally real. Not from one sort of Scrip¬ 
ture nor from the other taken alone—neither from 
the triumphantly joyful nor from the dolefully 
sorrowful—would a modern Bible student derive a 
full and fair account of God’s dealings with His 
children whom He loves. But with the light of 


112 THE MULTIPLEXITY OF DOCTRINE 


the one kind of Bible testimony mingling amid the 
shading and the shadows of the darker sort, the 
Christian who attends to the Scriptures in whole 
and not in part sees a picture vivid with all the 
mercies, both dark and bright, of an ever living 
and ever loving Father. 

Vain then are the arguments which the schools 
bring to demonstrate the authority of the Scrip¬ 
tures—impotent the resolutions that assemblies 
adopt rebuking those who acknowledge doubts. 
The Bible’s ascendancy over the minds of men can 
be confirmed by no such external measures. All 
is done when personally for each Bible-reader that 
happens which Cowper describes so simply—the 
truest, finest thing ever written about the Bible 
outside itself: ,■ 

“ The Spirit breathes upon the word 
And brings the truth to light.” 


XI 


THE EMPLOYMENT OF REASON 

I S it impertinent to exercise the human reason 
on a book of divine inspiration? Over this 
question many Christians conceive that a pro¬ 
foundly divisive difference exists in the contem¬ 
porary Church. On the part of a host of conser¬ 
vatives it is received as an axiom that what God 
has published to the world as His word of author¬ 
ity must in the nature of the case be read with un¬ 
questioning acceptance. From this standpoint it is 
no wonder that men who write books of Biblical 
criticism appear impious persons. 

The matter here at stake is not, however, en¬ 
tirely axiomatic. A deeper issue than either con¬ 
servatives or liberals realize underlies the question. 
The thing to be first decided is whether God has 
given men a book on which it is suitable for them 
to bring reason to bear—or whether it is a book in 
essence forbidding to reason. If God meant His 
volume of Scripture never to be reasoned about, 
then of course it is impertinence to offer a man’s 
opinion concerning it. But if God intended His 
book to awaken and summon forth the gift of rea¬ 
soning with which He has endowed man, then re¬ 
fusing to apply reason to the Bible is irreverent. 

113 


114 THE EMPLOYMENT OF REASON 


Can we know how in this particular it is God’s 
pleasure to have the Scriptures dealt with ? 

In the familiar forms of secular writing it is 
never difficult to determine which are intended to 
encourage and which to discourage independent 
exercise of the mind. One type of expression 
conspicuously not calculated to induce thought 
readily suggests itself; it is the highly specialized 
style in which the civic laws of modern states are 
written. Any one who has so much as looked 
inside a statute book knows the reiteration of 
terms, the multiplication of synonyms, the enumer¬ 
ation of every conceivable contingency, whereby it 
is hoped to put the letter of the law beyond the 
possibility of two constructions at any point what¬ 
ever. The man therefore who reads a legislative 
act is supposed to have but one business laid upon 
him; that is to comprehend what the law says. 
Reasoning, pro or con, on these premises, is super¬ 
fluous. 

It is true, indeed, that this theory of the matter 
fails to work out. An endless succession of 
judicial decisions learnedly interpreting disputed 
legislation constitutes an ever present proof that 
people do not understand the laws identically, how¬ 
soever painstakingly legislators may draw them. 
But always this effort to be unmistakable results 
in a quite distinctive kind of product, which on 
the most casual reading exposes the purpose to 
regimentalize all ideas based upon it. Something 
of the same kind may be observed in school text¬ 
books—especially text-books in the sciences— 


THE EMPLOYMENT OF EEASON 115 


•where language is put through its best disciplined 
paces with the sole idea of forbidding it to mean 
or even to suggest anything more than the one 
exact conception which standard science is ready 
to ratify. Theology also, writing its creeds with a 
like concern to mean just what it means and no 
more nor less, has to adopt much the same kind of 
strait-laced pronunciamento diction. 

What is to be thought of here, however, is not 
the success or the ill success of such efforts to say 
something that can neither be debated nor vari¬ 
ously interpreted. The more important observa¬ 
tion just now is that no writing which even aims 
at that effect—legal, scientific, creedal or in any 
form dogmatic—ever impressed anybody as liter¬ 
ature. Literature in all tongues and in all times 
has exactly the opposite influence. Instead of cir¬ 
cumscribing and confining thought, standardizing 
opinion and repressing imagination, literature fires 
and stirs minds that read, until thought leaps up 
to seize ideals belonging in loftier altitudes and 
imagination takes wings to distances that the mere 
words as written would never measure. 

Who would read a poem that tied down the soul 
to the baldly literal sense of each noun and adjec¬ 
tive and verb used to fill out the beat of the meter? 
A poem is no poem unless it releases fancies and 
aspirations and bids them soar where the only 
chart is the sunny joy of living in the love of God. 
Chains and walls can be made of words, and walls, 
if not chains, have their uses. But such are not 
the winged words of literature. They do not con- 


116 THE EMPLOYMENT OF REASON 


fine but set free. They do not forbid men to 
think; they compel thinking. They do not dull 
and stifle reason; they arouse the reason with 
scores of questions and set it searching earth and 
heaven for answers fit to be named rational. 
What really good book, out of all that are found 
written by men in all the libraries of the world, 
can a man read without stirring his reasoning pow¬ 
ers into vivid activity—accumulating confirma¬ 
tions, extending deductions, applying principles to 
added instances? 

From this digression then the inquiry returns to 
ask once more which kind of book God has pre¬ 
pared for men in His Bible. Is it a manual of 
statutes restricting human life within a framework 
of unyielding rules? Or is it a volume of en¬ 
franchising literature challenging men to adventure 
the greatening of their spiritual knowledge by ex¬ 
ploration of the ways of God? Manifestly, in¬ 
deed, a part of the Bible is formed on the pattern 
of all legalism—a structure of minute external re¬ 
quirements wrought into an inflexible system of 
corporate conformity. Such is the character of 
the Mosaic law, which constitutes so large a frac¬ 
tion of the second, third, fourth and fifth books of 
the Old Testament. Certain later parts of the 
same Testament likewise, though they do not par¬ 
take of the form, are characterized in general by 
the same governing outlook. 

But of the larger mass of the Bible there need 
be no hesitance in naming a different classification. 
The contributions made to its contents by its poets 


THE EMPLOYMENT OF REASON 117 


(both dramatic and lyric), its sages of the old He¬ 
brew “ wisdom,” its story-tellers, its prophets, its 
evangelists, its apostles, and above all, by its im¬ 
mortal Messiah—all these are literature of a qual¬ 
ity shiningly beyond all categories of “ the letter,” 
which Paul complained of as “ killing ” the spir¬ 
ituality of believers. They all instead are instinct 
with the spirit which (quoting Paul again) “ giv- 
eth life.” Indeed, the richest treasures of Bible 
literature are those very words which He who 
spoke them declared to be in and of themselves 
“ spirit and life.” 

Utterly vain then is it to talk of not employing 
human reason on the Bible. With a non-literary 
Bible that might be feasible, but not with this 
Bible. In the presence of a book crammed with 
ideas that awaken the human mind as spring sun¬ 
shine awakens sleeping flowers, by what unnat¬ 
ural and repressive magic is it proposed to prevent 
reason from sharing in the response of the soul? 
Or who imagines that when God calls humanity 
to participate in His glowing and kindling 
thoughts, He invites the tribute of every faculty in 
human nature save that which is best able to ap¬ 
preciate purpose, plan, cause, effect, continuity and 
consistency? When did the Creator ever brand 
man’s reason as unholy—unfit to handle the sacred 
things of either His deeds or of His words? 

Equally impermissible is it to suppose that man’s 
reason is bidden to engage itself only with those 
things in the Scriptures that are plain to see and 
understand; the very nature of reason, as God has 


118 THE EMPLOYMENT OF REASON 


embedded it in the intelligence of men, gives it a 
houndlike scent for what is not plain, for what is 
apparently altogether non-understandable. It 
would be therefore mere mockery for the Giver of 
the Bible to set a boundary in it between the ob¬ 
vious and the obscure, and prohibit the reader 
from taking his reasonableness with him across 
that line. To be sure, the keenest of reason will 
never penetrate to the center of religion’s mys¬ 
teries. But let us be also sure that God hinders 
it not from going as far as it is able. It is pre¬ 
posterous to put all this artificial enmity between 
reason and revelation. God gave both, and He 
prepared the one that it might receive the other. 
He has fitted each to each. Every page of the 
Bible might be justly inscribed with the invitation 
which stands in living letters on the first page of 
the Prophet Isaiah: “ Come now and let us reason 
together, saith Jehovah.” Reason is God’s joy— 
not His “ black beast.” 

It is by no means beside the mark here to ob¬ 
serve how ironical a paradox dogs the footsteps 
of those who maintain that every Bible utterance 
is to be taken in its simplest literal sense and must 
not be subjected in any particular to rationalizing 
interpretation. This they cling to, oblivious of the 
pragmatic contradiction which their very ortho¬ 
doxy compels. For their theory also obliges them 
to hold that every Bible verse in its simple literal 
sense is an explicitly exact statement of fact. 
When therefore two such verses appear on their 
face to present quite different views of matters to 


THE EMPLOYMENT OF EEASON 119 


which both allude—and any Bible reader knows 
how often that happens—there comes a serious 
strain on consistency. No other resort is open 
than to proceed to “ reconcile ” them by whatever 
supposition appears least violent. It often seems, 
when one picks up a typical Bible commentary of 
the literalist school, that the larger portion of the 
volume is occupied with the anxious labour of such 
reconciliations. 

By what means then is this reconciling accom¬ 
plished? Why, by means of human reason ap¬ 
plied to interpret concordantly the text of the 
Scriptures. There is no other means by which it 
can be done. No matter how strenuously a man 
mav contend that such and such a single passage 
must be taken to signify just what it says, when 
he brings two passages together (especially if their 
harmony is to his mind predetermined), he finds 
himself in spite of himself reasoning out unity be¬ 
tween them according to his own intelligence. An 
inference from one statement applied to amplify 
a scanter allusion in the other; an explanation, 
transferred perhaps in the opposite direction, 
carrying a new shade of colour into a narrative 
that standing alone would bear a quite different 
implication; the composite revision of an entire 
story in order to weave in all the incidents found 
in two independent accounts—these are familiar 
expedients to which conservative scholars en¬ 
gaged in the exegesis of the Bible are constrained 
to devote prodigious ingenuity. 

Such devices are of course employed in all sin- 


120 THE EMPLOYMENT OF REASON 


cerity of devotion to the truth of God; they are 
honest efforts to make that truth more lucid. But 
certainly the reflective and the scrupulous among 
students using these methods of exposition cannot 
pretend to abide by the dictum that men have no 
right to invade the realm of divine revelation with 
reason’s readjustments. It is that very thing that 
they are doing all the while. Their experience 
and example are rather a practical demonstration 
that the Bible cannot be appropriated in all its 
values by anybody who does not look at it in the 
light of the best human faculties that can be 
brought to bear upon it. 

It may seem a jesting “tu quoque ” to say of 
the literally orthodox in Bible studies that they 
are more inveterate rationalists than the higher 
critics whom they so unanimously condemn. But 
it is not a jest; it is the easily observable fact. 
Confronting a so-called “ difficulty ” as between 
two seemingly disagreeing portions of Scripture, 
the liberal scholar is usually content to let the text 
stand undisturbed and even unexplained just as it 
is. The conservative, on the contrary, weaves a 
great net of cross references by which he drags 
the questioned paragraph or chapter into a de¬ 
cidedly different orientation. Sometimes the new 
angle of vision opened up by this process puts the 
truth in clearer light, and the scholarship which 
accomplishes it would elicit the gratitude of all 
Bible-lovers except for one flaw in its picture of 
reality—the pious pretense that the result reached 
in this fashion is itself dogmatically infallible and 


THE EMPLOYMENT OF REASON 121 


not the product of a purely human exercise in the 
art of rationalizing the varied materials of the 
Bible. 

An instance of the tireless zeal with which these 
rationalistic efforts are carried on by those who 
imagine that nothing else will put an unshakable 
foundation under the Bible, is the labour that has 
been spent to explain how it happened that King 
Saul did not recognize the youth who fought 
Goliath if that youth, according to the letter of the 
history, had already been Saul’s favourite harper 
in his own court. The higher critic says: “ Two 
traditions ”—and lets it go at that. The man who 
believes that he is no kind of a critic at all, who 
boasts that he takes everything in the Bible in 
exactly the way it is stated and asks no question, 
says: “ Now we have got to figure this thing out ” 
—and puckers his brows for hours at a time at¬ 
tempting to range all the data of the story in one 
consistent chain. He has a perfect right to. But 
it’s reason he’s using; he’s an undeniable ration¬ 
alist—trying by reason to establish something not 
said in the Bible. 

A case still more egregious of the same charac¬ 
ter is the premillennial program which a strong 
party of uncompromising dogmatists have worked 
out, professing to show the exact course of events 
which must intervene between the present hour 
and the reappearance of Jesus Christ on the earth 
—including the surreptitious removal from the 
world of all true Christians and an ensuing erup¬ 
tion of general horror outdoing the worst previous 


122 THE EMPLOYMENT OF SEASON 


experiences of the race. Every item of this pre¬ 
diction is supported by an authentic Bible citation. 
Nevertheless it is precisely true to say that nothing 
like this foreseen history can be read in any part 
of the Bible. As a connected prophecy it is wholly 
a piece of man’s device. For in spite of these 
quotations all being in Scripture, there is not even 
the ground plan there for the scheme of association 
by which they are brought together. 

Many of the passages thus used were never sup¬ 
posed either by their writers or by their earlier 
readers to have anything to do with the end of the 
world. Of others it can only be said that the 
exegesis to which premillenarians submit them 
leaves lingering in free minds a large measure of 
doubt. But putting these things aside, the matter 
evident beyond controversy is that, however in¬ 
fallible may be the individual proof-texts of this 
cult, the pattern of the mosaic into which they 
are forcibly fitted bears not the faintest glint of 
infallibility. They could be laid together quite as 
readily in a totally different design; in fact, that 
has been often done by postmillennialists who felt 
just as sure of themselves as the premillennialists 
could ever be. It ought to be the candid admis¬ 
sion of the latter that their picture of great and 
terrible events speedily to come is not what the 
Scripture says, but what their own very human 
reason has somewhat plausibly managed to make 
Scripture appear to say. It is rationalism pure and 
simple—though certainly not to be branded un¬ 
true on that sole account. 


THE EMPLOYMENT OF BEASON 123 


It is then not simply allowable to bring the in¬ 
spired Scriptures under the survey of human rea¬ 
son; it is by the very character of the book ren¬ 
dered imperative. And this necessity has bearings 
far wider than the comparatively insignificant 
matters that have served us for passing illustra¬ 
tion. There is involved in it the primary vindica¬ 
tion of that often scorned discipline of the church 
—systematic theology. There is no systematic the¬ 
ology in the Bible, but the Bible none the less con¬ 
ducts the actively thoughtful student to a point 
where some kind of theology, more or less sys¬ 
tematic, becomes the indispensable apparel of his 
pilgrimage. He gets it by weaving Bible woof 
into the warp of his own inquisitive soul, and the 
fabric often outlasts the long journey. 

More popularly significant, however, is the pro¬ 
priety which by this view of reason and the Bible 
is conceded to Biblical criticism as a reverential 
employment for competent Christian men. In 
great sections of the Church there still prevails 
the inquisitorial prejudice which would put criti¬ 
cism of the Scriptures in the calendar of supreme 
atrocities. But when it is once shown that the 
conservative is as little able as the radical to avoid 
judging the Bible with whatever intellectual light 
he has—that virtually God Himself has compelled 
such judgment—there must certainly ensue a saner 
attitude toward the critics and a better discrimina¬ 
tion between the good and the bad among them— 
or as is perhaps safer to say, between the better 
and the worse. 


124 THE EMPLOYMENT OF EEASON 

Much misunderstanding and even more hatred, 
as useless as it is unjustifiable, inhere in the 
chronic misreading of the very term “ criticism.” 
Even persons of education and extensive knowl¬ 
edge suffer themselves subconsciously to entertain 
the vernacular sense of the verb “ criticise ” and of 
its derivatives, assuming that criticism is simply 
an inveterate faultfinding, elevated in the univer¬ 
sities to the dignity of a learned profession. But 
of course this phraseology as applied to the Bible 
and all Bible subjects rises to the plane of the 
technical conception cherished in literature and the 
arts—the thought that criticism is, first of all, ap¬ 
plause of excellencies, and only by negative con¬ 
sequence comes round to the marking of faults. 
To the Bible critic then the Church should come 
not expecting a discount on the Scriptures, en¬ 
forced by a catalogue of defects and deficiencies, 
but frankly anticipating from him some fresh 
tribute to the greatness and grandeur of the book 
of God. 

Were that anticipation prevalent among every¬ 
day Christians, pastors and laymen, its magnetism 
would no doubt draw forth from scholarship an 
expanding eloquence on the power and nobility of 
the massive Bible entire, in lieu of penny-counting 
rivalries to see who can collect from odd corners 
of the book the largest symposium of insignificant 
guesses at possible mistakes. Already there is a 
great change observable from the negative effect 
of earlier movements of criticism, and the morn¬ 
ing of appreciation following a too lengthy night 


THE EMPLOYMENT OF REASON 125 


of depreciation is surely dawning over the Scrip¬ 
tural studies of this generation. When that morn¬ 
ing is fully come all men will be able to see how 
fruitful is the result of sowing human intelligence 
in an inspired soil. 

There are those who consider it a useful dis¬ 
crimination to divide between constructive critics 
and destructive critics, applauding the former, 
anathematizing the latter. But that test is rather 
too tedious in confirmation to serve for present 
guidance; not for a generation or two will it be 
possible to tell whether our contemporary critics 
are constructing what will stand or destroying 
what ought to stand. But there is a distinction 
which should always be easy for the just-minded 
to apply. There are some critics who despise the 
Bible and are bent on ridiculing it into oblivion; 
there are other critics who love it and are passion¬ 
ately anxious to set it forth in so clear and ap¬ 
pealing a light that it will win constantly—and 
most of all among the young—more faith, more 
trust, more usage, more vital vogue in private lives 
and popular affairs. The first, no matter how 
erudite they are or even how meticulously correct, 
are not of our company; let them range themselves 
with the foe. But the other sort—the true Bible- 
lovers—are allies in the militant kingdom of God 
with all good disciples of Jesus Christ, and in their 
fellowship we shall go forward to a brighter and 
larger appropriation of the revelation of God as 
contained in the Scriptures of the Old and New 
Testaments. 


126 THE EMPLOYMENT OF REASON 


And yet—and yet—let us remind ourselves, ere 
we pass from this theme, that none of the Bible 
writers were either critics or theologians in any 
such sense as these terms convey in present-day 
schools and churches. This is true even of Paul 
and John, who are now regarded as prototypes 
and patron saints of all the race and lineage of 
theological professors. John at Ephesus preached 
Jesus as the eternally preexistent Word by whom 
all things were made, and Paul with passionate 
earnestness wrote to the Romans of God’s ability 
to justify sinners because of the propitiation 
wrought on the cross in the blood of Christ. In 
what they said of these matters there were in¬ 
cluded all the elements out of which have been 
later constructed the theological doctrines of the 
Trinity and the atonement. But neither Paul nor 
John nor any other Bible writer ever developed 
either of these fundamental articles of the Chris¬ 
tian faith into a philosophic dogma. 

Afterward came those who, when they had said 
that the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are 
equally divine, found themselves constrained in 
their own minds to try to define how these three 
personalities could consist together in one God¬ 
head—to say how men might believe in the God¬ 
head of all three without believing in three Gods. 
Likewise they deemed it needful to describe in 
terms of philosophy just how it was that the death 
of Christ on the cross enabled the Holy God to blot 
out the sins of the unholy and receive them to 
Himself. They who felt this urge were not, 


THE EMPLOYMENT OF EEASON 127 


however, the apostles or their contemporaries; 
they were a later rank of Christian leaders—the 
generation of Nicsea and thereabouts. Their 
work, therefore, while worthy of immense honour, 
bears no such peculiar seal of divinity as the in¬ 
spiring Spirit has used to certify the New Testa¬ 
ment. The formulation of theology was strictly a 
post-Biblical development. 

Whoever then with sincerity regards the Bible 
as the paramount standard by which faith is to be 
tested, must needs recognize as orthodox any faith 
accepting and building upon the Bible facts, 
whether the philosophy now derived from those 
facts agrees or does not agree with explanations 
of the same that were favoured by the Nicene and 
later theologians. The modern disciple who like 
Paul looks upon Jesus as “ existing in the form of 
God,” by that consideration alone comes well 
within the range of the historic trinitarianism of 
Christianity. And he is not to be excluded if in 
place of the Nicene distinction of three persons in 
one God he distinguishes rather three manifesta¬ 
tions of one God. From anything that Paul or 
John wrote on the subject it is impossible to tell 
which was the view of either of them. Perhaps, 
in the midst of engrossing missionary and pastoral 
service, neither ever penetrated far enough into the 
psychic problem to work out a definite thought of 
how the Son was metaphysically related to the 
Father. 

So too these great apostolic teachers probably 
never weighed and balanced theories of the atone- 


128 THE EMPLOYMENT OF EEASON 


ment as Christian philosophers have done in the 
centuries since. So far as their writings tell, the 
apostles simply took the fact and ended there. 
They said: “ Christ died for our sins according to 
the Scriptures.” And inasmuch as that message ef¬ 
fectually saved men, it fully contented the preach¬ 
ers of it. Whoever then can truly echo that word, 
is an orthodox follower of the apostles. He be¬ 
lieves and teaches the atonement. And it is all 
one whether he considers that Jesus thus died for 
the sinner as a substituted sacrifice or in a great 
dramatic demonstration of an everlasting divine 
love stronger than death and supreme in unselfish¬ 
ness. Taking the atonement either way, the 
Christian is honestly accepting all that the Bible 
says. Explanations one way or the other are 
purely human addenda, in which no doubt it is 
pleasing to God for the speculations of men to range 
broadly, since the sum of them all, woven into the 
chain of reverent Christian thought, still consti¬ 
tutes a measure far too short to encompass the 
whole significance of Christ’s self-devotion in life 
and in death for the sinner’s sake. 

Let us then by no means discard our theologies. 
Used aright, they can cast great illumination on 
the pathway of the Church’s progress to the fuller 
meanings of religion. But let us ever remember 
that not our theologies, but the Gospel about, of 
and in our Lord Jesus Christ, is the power that is 
to save the world. And it is not theology but Gos¬ 
pel that the Bible furnishes. So may we accustom 
ourselves often to return from the cloistered re- 


THE EMPLOYMENT OF BEASON 129 


treats in which the philosophers of the Church 
work out their elaborate reconstructions of Bible 
data, and seek company instead with the first di¬ 
rect and urgent preachers of the evangel, who, in¬ 
nocent of the dogmatizing which less eager ages 
have loitered to indulge, “ knew nothing save Jesus 
Christ and him crucified.” We shall be closer to 
the real heart of our Lord the oftener we set aside 
all later sophistications and refresh our souls anew 
with the spontaneous simplicities amid which Jesus 
and His twelve companions walked in the early 
days of our religion. 


XII 


MIRACLES IN THE BIBLE 


T HE fear prompting resistance to the use 
of men’s reason in Bible exegesis is more 
than all else a dread of what will happen 
to the miracle stories in the book. The modern 
mind, everybody realizes, is not predisposed to ac¬ 
cept miracle stories from any source, being of 
course in this respect quite opposite to the general 
mind of the times in which the Bible was pro¬ 
duced. Will not then twentieth-century reason, if 
given free sweep, expel from the Bible every ex¬ 
ample of supernatural intervention? It is this 
peril which, as many conceive, can only be met by 
saying to men: “ Whatever is told in this book 
you must believe just because it is found here. 
You are not permitted to inquire about the ac¬ 
curacy of any of it.” 

It would perhaps make for quietude in many 
quarters if the matter could be so clamped down 
and left undisturbed. But if we have been at all 
right in arguing that the Bible is not only lawfully 
open to the investigations of human reason but is 
divinely calculated to invoke (even provoke) such 
investigation, then it is clear that the miracles re¬ 
lated therein cannot be excluded from the scope 

130 


MIRACLES IN THE BIBLE 


131 


of this questioning. Nor can a predetermined au¬ 
thentication of them be guaranteed before the in¬ 
quiry begins. Predetermination of the outcome 
takes the honesty out of any inquiry. Neverthe¬ 
less the case for the miraculous is not to be 
thought forfeited by granting such freedom. In¬ 
dependent external corroboration that the marvels 
told of in the Bible actually happened has of course 
long since become impossible. But the moral pre¬ 
sumptions in favour of that supernatural setting in 
which the major miracles of Bible history appear 
—and in which their spiritual significance makes 
them rationally plausible—grow stronger as views 
of Bible revelation grow more comprehensive. 

It will increase, however, for the believer both 
the clarity of his own thinking on this subject 
and his sympathy for those who are unable to 
partake of his credence, if he considers why the 
mind of these times has a difficulty with miracles 
which earlier generations did not experience. 
There is in part involved no doubt a certain un¬ 
moral resistance to religious obligation, but that 
is nothing new. There has always been in use 
among irreligious men some such “ protective 
mechanism ” for shielding uncomfortable con¬ 
sciences; an impersonal discussion of theology is 
much more agreeable to sustain than pointed refer¬ 
ence to the need for correcting one’s own attitude 
toward God. In all generations whatever matters 
might at the time be topics of current controversy 
in religion, have been impartially availed of by 
persons whose only really anxious care was to 


132 


MIEACLES IN THE BIBLE 


save themselves from being driven to close quar¬ 
ters on the subject of their own spiritual duty. 
Such people to-day find that nothing else serves so 
well for defensive diversion as the loud announce¬ 
ment: “ I don’t believe in the miracles that we read 
about in the Bible.” 

Yet this in no way accounts for the specific 
trouble which nowadays men have in adjusting 
their intelligence to the conception of a miracle. 
Thousands of the devoutest spirits who live in 
these times feel that their confession of faith in 
Jesus Christ and His Gospel would be perfectly 
easy—and supremely joyous—if only it was not 
necessary to accept narratives that relate things 
outside the course of nature which He did or were 
done in Him. Here without question has come 
the great reversal that affects religion more than 
any other one item in the mental progress of the 
Christian era. When Jesus was on earth it would 
have been hard for typical men of the age to be¬ 
lieve in any religion which was not evidenced by 
marvels manifesting the direct intervention of Al¬ 
mighty God. Now we live in an age when very 
many would find themselves much more able to 
put confidence in the reality of religion if there 
were no miraculous factors—at least, physically 
miraculous—in any way attached to it. 

This is a tremendous shift of viewpoint which 
certainly the men of the time of Jesus—either His 
disciples or His enemies—never so much as 
dreamed of. If He Himself foresaw it, that of it¬ 
self would afford a strong ratification for the 


MIRACLES IK THE BIBLE 


133 


claim that as a truly divine Teacher He brought to 
earth a message superior to the contingencies of 
human change and valid until the “ consummation 
of the age.” And did He not foresee? Why else 
was He so impatient with “ an evil and adulterous 
generation " that “ seeketh after a sign ” ? Again 
and again He refused to do miracles which people 
around Him—though perhaps insincerely—prom¬ 
ised to accept as tokens of His Messiahship. To 
be sure, the Master could not wholly omit “ mighty 
works ” in an epoch of life when for any mes¬ 
senger of God miracles were regarded as indis¬ 
pensable credentials. Doing them not for show 
but for service, He did perform miracles of which 
all who were concerned might take knowledge. 
He knew that there were many who would believe 
Him only “ for the very works' sake." Those, 
therefore, He gave their fair chance—the “ wit¬ 
ness " which their stage of spiritual perception re¬ 
quired. 

But even while He accorded to certain disciples 
this testimony of the “ works," He voiced a deeper 
satisfaction in the faith of those who did not need 
such an outward show of proof—who just from 
the forthright spiritual convincingness of the mes¬ 
sage were able to believe on His word alone that, 
as He expressed it, “ I am in the Father and the 
Father in me." Surely in His prospective hope 
there was even then the vision of a more deeply 
religious future when men would not be asking 
for material marvels to assure them of the presence 
of God in the world, but with a keener awareness 


134 


MIRACLES IN THE BIBLE 


of spiritual things, would see in the very 
character of Christ Himself the surer evi¬ 
dence of eternal Fatherhood yearning for the 
good of humanity. If indeed such was the 
vision before His eyes then, how happy He must 
be with this present age of ours, when it is very 
certain that the Personality revealed by His own 
incarnation has become an argument for faith ten 
thousand times more powerful than all the mir¬ 
acles that He ever wrought. 

If the Lord did thus forecast a time when men 
would care little for outward miracles and much 
for the inward miracles of grace, He certainly did 
not look forward to it as an age of doubt—as so 
many dolefully insist that the present age is—but 
as an age of faith. There is, as we have just 
acknowledged, something of infidelity in current 
discounting of miracles, but on the whole there is 
in it a good deal more of sincere and trustful 
religious principle. For the modem Christian 
stumbles in this matter over no doubt of God’s 
power. He stumbles over no factitious dogmatism 
asserting that there are laws of nature which na¬ 
ture’s God is incapable of transcending. He pre¬ 
sumes on no fiction of invariable nature or human 
nature. He has indeed but a single puzzle to 
disturb him in all these premises. It is best 
pictured in the words of the apostle who wrote to 
the Hebrews: “ Jesus Christ is the same yesterday 
and to-day, yea and forever.” That is what every 
reverent thought of Jesus Christ would say of 
Him; and if of Him, how much more of the Father 


MIRACLES IN THE BIBLE 


135 


in heaven whom He so constantly and lovingly pro¬ 
claimed ! Flux and mutation on earth; new ideas 
and new ways constantly developing among man¬ 
kind; but with God as supreme governor of an 
ordered universe, with Jesus as supreme revealer 
of the divine character, surely no novelty or 
amendment or revised policy. 

Here then is where the great hazard comes in 
the path of a simple faith approaching the mir¬ 
acles: There are no miracles now; why were there 
miracles in Bible times ? Has God changed ? Or 
is His arm shortened so that in our day He cannot 
do what once He did? If miraculous demonstra¬ 
tions of His power were once a part of the dis¬ 
cipline of the law and of the preaching of the 
Gospel, why is there no such evidence in our day ? 
A miracle is not simply an unexplained wonder; 
wonders in nature and science are innumerable 
and few of them explained. A miracle is a won¬ 
der which does not recur. And the whole hard¬ 
ship about believing it lies in the fact that it does 
not happen again. 

For this perplexity there is but one possible 
manner of solution within the range of a rational 
faith. Of course God cannot change, nor is Jesus 
different to-day from what He was yesterday. 
But the world changes, and the Immutable and 
Infinite One is neither so poor in resource nor so 
vagrant in adaptability that He can fit no new 
means to the training of an advancing race. A 
glimpse of progressive educational method in the 
Bible, by which simpler ideas were commended to 


136 


MIRACLES IN THE BIBLE 


the simpler people of a simpler time, and a higher 
range of thinking and fact opened to the under¬ 
standing of a more developed age, has already 
interested us. And it may very well have been 
in the same divine curriculum simply another 
aspect which proved God’s reality in earlier days 
by supernatural acts in the physical creation, but in 
later times has preferred to rely on the super¬ 
natural spiritual experiences of men whom Christ 
has saved from sin. 

Analogies that may be drawn from the pedagogy 
which instructs our children in modern schools lie 
parallel to such a thought. What is the teach¬ 
ing method of the kindergarten? Blocks, balls, 
games, sand-boxes, crayons—everything concrete 
for object lessons. What the method of the uni¬ 
versity professor? Lectures, assignments of 
themes, discussions, references to the written au¬ 
thorities—everything in the abstract for reason to 
take hold of and for reflection to elaborate. Allow 
that God kept a kindergarten equipped with object 
lessons in the elder time, and in this day is getting 
His pupils on toward the university stage—is there 
not sufficient suggestion there of reasons why 
there should once have been objective miracles 
which this generation no longer sees? God has 
simply substituted for His former appeal to the 
eyes of men a new and higher appeal to the con¬ 
sciousness of the human soul. And if we have in¬ 
terpreted Jesus rightly, all this is a graduation into 
higher things for which He was exceedingly eager 
when He was in the world. 


MIRACLES IN THE BIBLE 


137 


It is also to be mentioned that extraordinary 
conditions always require exceptional measures. 
Furthermore, unique conjunctions of powers and 
forces must produce unprecedented results. This 
observation applies to God’s moral universe to-day 
exactly the same as ever. In this sense the age of 
miracles is not past and can never pass while the 
universe endures. If God had some purpose to 
accomplish to-day which natural means would not 
suffice to carry through, He would assuredly not 
let the purpose fail for lack of miraculous inter¬ 
position. Indeed, the story of mankind abounds, 
as much outside the Bible as inside it, with in¬ 
stances of those “ lucky chances ” or “ providential 
developments ” which have again and again given 
victory to righteous causes against apparently 
hopeless odds. As acts of immediate divine control 
over the otherwise uncertain contingencies of life, 
such events have to the senses of faith all the 
characteristics of miracle, except the deflection of 
nature’s accustomed cause and effect. They are 
distinctly supernatural interventions. And the 
keener the crisis between good and bad, the less 
strange is the intervention. The path made for 
Israel across the Red Sea would have been incredi¬ 
ble in any ordinary case; on the day when the fate 
of a nation destined for the service of God hangs 
in the balance, anything which saves a people is 
credible. 

But, as of course all Christians know, the pin¬ 
nacle heights of miracle in the Bible are reached in 
the life of Jesus Christ, Himself as God manifest 


I 


138 MIRACLES IN THE BIBLE 

in the flesh the Miracle of the ages. Here once it 
may have been the miracles that proved the Man, 
but to-day it is the Man who proves the miracles. 
Considering how different He is from other men, 
as the conviction of accumulating centuries more 
and more attests—as the twentieth century better 
than all its predecessors appreciates—we can hold 
it nothing unbelievable that His earthly life began, 
proceeded and ended with circumstances such as 
have attached to no other life known to humanity. 

A Person elevated in quality of character and in 
dynamic of influence so far above the best attain¬ 
ments of the race elsewhere, indexes the presence 
of vitalities and potencies more transcendently 
divine than ever centered in any other single life in 
this world. How reasonable then are the memoirs 
of His career, which show forth those unmatched 
forces in unmatched victory over enmity and hate, 
in unmatched ministration to evil, misery and sor¬ 
row—which reflect the shine of heavenly lights 
along all the path by which the Master walked His 
way through the midst of men—which reveal Him 
dispensing the gracious mercies of God the Father 
to the poorest and most hopeless of all that He 
met. That radiant story no man could wish to 
replace with a picture less beautiful. Is it possible 
that any man could be happier for replacing it with 
a record poorer in beneficent power? 

The one supremely appropriate miracle in all 
this gracious life, persuasively crowning all else 
that is told us concerning Jesus Christ, is His 
resurrection. That mighty event is commended to 


MIRACLES m THE BIBLE 


139 


the belief of the world not only by the historical 
circumstances surrounding it—by the admitted 
truth that the Lord’s rising from the dead explains, 
and nothing else does explain, the astonishing re¬ 
turn of faith and hope to the disciples whom His 
crucifixion plunged into despair. It is also and 
even more profoundly made real to the spiritually 
sensitive soul by a consciousness of the fitting 
culmination to which it brought the earthly stay of 
the incarnate “ Word of God.” The power of that 
life was a power which in its eternal preeminence 
of strength and beauty was justly destined to con¬ 
quer the grave; by moral instinct the believer feels 
what the great preacher of Pentecost proclaimed to 
the Jerusalem multitude: “ It was not possible that 
he should be holden of death.” More still, the 
rising of Jesus offers a pledge of immortality to 
the human hunger for immortality such as emerges 
nowhere else to satisfy the anxious heart of man. 
In all these ways the crown of the miracles relates 
itself to the spiritual experience of the race and 
obtains a verification which, though it counts for 
nothing in demonstrative logic, counts for every¬ 
thing in the trust of mankind. 

If it were possible to make the same kind of 
affirmation about the miracle which accomplished 
the incarnation of the Divine Word one of the 
most entangled problems of current religion would 
be greatly simplified. Was Christ miraculously 
born of a virgin? The narrative which tells us so 
is quite as plain and explicit as the narrative which 
reports the empty tomb and the reappearance of 


140 


MIRACLES IK THE BIBLE 


the crucified Master among His followers. And 
there would be no more doubt of the former than 
of the latter in reverent minds if the miraculous 
conception stood now in any such relation to 
Christian experience as the resurrection does. 
Until a recent day in the history of the Church the 
virgin birth of Christ has expressed a concrete 
value to both individual faith and corporate the¬ 
ology. It was the sign and seal of the “ fullness 
of the Godhead ” dwelling bodily in Jesus that He 
should have been born without other father than 
His Father in heaven. And that same sense of a 
miracle birth as necessary for the incarnate God 
would have still been persisting in full power 
within the evangelical Church if there had not come 
over the world, with the dawn of an intensely 
scientific age, that universal change in point of 
view which has been already alluded to. 

This change replaced with a very different basic 
thought the old assumption that God can be seen 
and known to work only in some totally unprec¬ 
edented act which cannot be referred to natural 
law. The new opinion that God is just as divinely 
present in any of the common operations of nature 
as He could be in the most remarkable special mir¬ 
acle, is beyond all question an immense gain for 
faith—the extension of religious sacredness over 
a measureless area of routine circumstance and 
ordinary life. But it has had in this respect an 
unforeseen and, to a degree, disturbing conse¬ 
quence. It has occurred to certain men of faith— 
not of unfaith—to ask why it should be supposed 


MIRACLES IN THE BIBLE 


141 


to be necessary to work a miracle in order to house 
the Eternal Reality within the tabernacle of a hu¬ 
man body? A spiritual miracle—that it was, un¬ 
deniably. But why a physical miracle? 

A generation that believes in God as the worker 
of every work, from the upthrust of a grass-blade 
to the unfolding of immortal personality, has no 
philosophical answer for that question. It might 
be said that men could not believe in a divine in¬ 
carnation without a superhuman birth, but that 
assertion falls to the ground at once in face of the 
fact that many men do so believe. They count on 
every human conception and every human birth as 
the work of God, and they are unprepared to say 
that He who by this means supplies human bodies 
with human souls would be impotent by the like 
means to supply one human body with a Divine 
Soul. 

The upreach of men's hearts for a Saviour with 
the power of God in his hands and the love of 
God in his breast, which under other circumstances 
would clinch the doctrine of the virgin birth in 
the unbreakable grip of spiritual necessity, is in 
these conditions not so imperative. And many 
doubts wander through the Church, asking why it 
is that Jesus staked no divine claims on His mirac¬ 
ulous coming into the world; why His mother 
and His brethren were apparently so indifferent to 
His supernatural origin; why the apostles never 
incorporated the virgin birth into their evangel; 
why especially John, who so powerfully teaches 
the eternal preexistence of Mary's Son, sets no 


142 


MIRACLES IN THE BIBLE 


store on the proof of a physical origin different 
from that of other men? 

All these questions, painful as they are to the 
sensibilities of old-time disciples, must be faced, 
dealt with, responded to; it would be a fatal con¬ 
fession of intellectual cowardice for the Church 
anywhere to forbid the discussion of the problem 
or anathematize those who raise the question. 
The Church must always be for opening every 
question wide; it is only so that all the truth can 
come out. And in this case all occasion for panic 
or for dread of consequences to ensue disappears 
in the presence of one superlative thought-mark 
of this present time—the constantly increasing 
modern appreciation of Jesus—His character, His 
words, His work. 

Whether men do or do not esteem Him to have 
been brought into the world by a miracle, they do 
esteem Him the superlative Teacher of mankind 
in the truths of the spiritual life—the one supreme 
Mentor of the consciences of men. Such is the 
consensus which now approximates unanimity 
throughout the thoughtful world. And men do 
not rate Him simply as a man either; without the 
refinements of theological definition which the 
creeds attempt, the world calls Him its one actual 
superman and at the least a neighbour to the 
divine. 

Even those who doubt the virgin birth are not 
thinking to dishonour Jesus. The unclean slur 
about an illegitimate parentage has been, so far as 
modem discussion goes, no suggestion of these 


MIKACLES m THE BIBLE 


143 


doubters; it was a boomerang foolishly thrown by 
certain orthodox defenders of Christ and the 
Bible. The other parties to the question have 
constantly said that if the birth story of Jesus as 
told in Luke is not literal fact, it is sacred legend 
developing from a great loyalty to Him which 
thus sought to account for the vast contrasts 
visible between Jesus and the rest of hu¬ 
manity. And in the end it may decisively 
serve to vindicate the literalness of the na¬ 
tivity narrative that its critics have elected to 
stand on just this alternative to its historicity. 
We have already observed that a miracle birth is 
hard to believe in our environment because natural 
birth itself seems to us a divine wonder. There 
was in the orient in ancient times one nation only 
which felt just that way—the Hebrew nation, 
which always said: “ Lo, children are a heritage of 
Jehovah.” The Jewish people, therefore, never 
had the mental background that would suggest a 
poetic imagination of miraculous paternity as a 
tribute of honour to any man. The Greeks made 
myths on that supposition; there is not a sign of 
any such strain in Hebrew thought. Yet the 
stories of Christ’s birth are Hebrew—purely He¬ 
brew. On the strictest critical grounds it is easier 
to accept their actuality than to presume them 
fanciful. Hebrews would have been little more 
likely to invent such a story than Americans. 

Yet all this is but a secondary matter where the 
consciousness of Christians has responded to the 
supreme and sublime New Testament revelation of 


144 


MIEACLES IN THE BIBLE 


Jesus of Nazareth as the only begotten Son of 
God, who “ being found in fashion as a man 
humbled himself, becoming obedient unto death, 
yea, the death of the cross—wherefore God highly 
exalted him and gave unto him the name which is 
above every name.” It is He, Jesus Christ, who 
is the all comprehending Miracle of the Bible, and 
so long as the ascending star of His incarnate di¬ 
vinity is rising higher on the firmament of human 
idealism—as it surely is to-day—there need be 
none to fear in His case “ the elimination of the 
supernatural element from the Scriptures.” Per¬ 
chance there might here or there be some one rash 
enough to think he could accomplish that feat. 
But what can he do while of the whole book Jesus 
Himself remains the “ chief corner-stone ”.? 


XIII 


LIBERALISM WITHIN ORTHODOXY 


T HE opinions touching the Bible which 
have been set down in the foregoing 
studies have consulted no authority ex¬ 
cept the Scriptures themselves. There is, however, 
a deep satisfaction in finding, when the subject 
has been so far traversed, that the conclusions ar¬ 
rived at are in large accord with what was said 
about the Scriptures by the Puritan theologians 
who gathered at Westminster in 1645 to erect a 
Reformation structure of doctrine and polity for 
the Protestantism of England. 

The stalwart Confession of Faith which they 
elaborated is sufficient certificate for the intellec¬ 
tual power of the members of that famous as¬ 
sembly, and a present-day pilgrim may fairly feel 
that he has not wandered into any domain of folly 
when he reaches a resting-place within sight of 
their celebrated heights. But more important is 
the reassurance which must be afforded to many 
by discovering how remote from “ modernism,” 
judged by this comparison, are some of the views 
of Scripture which are often nowadays branded 
as dangerous. The Westminster Confession in de¬ 
fining Bible inspiration is decisively broader in out- 

145 


146 LIBERALISM WITHIN ORTHODOXY 


look and far less mechanical in its conception of 
Scripture authority than many latter-day inter¬ 
pretations professing to be based upon it. Timidi¬ 
ties which the Westminster divines did not feel 
have induced more recent defenders of the faith 
to block up with too hasty dogmatisms windows 
which they left open for light and air. 

For example, the inerrancy of the Scriptures as 
to facts of nature and records of history has come 
to be with a host of contemporary Christians the 
supreme test of authenticity for the book. But 
the eloquent and expansive chapter which the 
Westminster assembly produced on the topic of the 
Bible contains not the barest suggestion of any 
such idea. Probably the authors of the confession 
would not have agreed among themselves whether 
in this sense the Bible is inerrant. But they did 
agree in regarding it as needless to establish such 
a character for the book in order to command for 
it the honour and reverence and obedience to which 
it is entitled by the divine supremacy which for 
far more significant reasons they attributed to it. 

The qualities which these men did think req¬ 
uisite in the Bible were such and such only as had 
evidently to do with the object for which God 
gave it to humanity. And they had no difficulty 
in defining to their own satisfaction what that 
object was. It is surprising but gratifying to find 
that these learned and philosophic gentlemen, 
whose flow of language was singularly copious on 
other aspects of their subject, were terse, simple 
and sententious when they undertook to say what 


LIBERALISM WITHIN ORTHODOXY 147 


God intended the Scriptures for. Two lines suf¬ 
fice. When the books of the Old and New Testa¬ 
ments had been rehearsed in order, they added: 

“ All which were given by inspiration of God to 
be the rule of faith and life.^ 

Faith and life! To these ends, vital for every 
immortal spirit on whom the image of God confers 
potential partnership in things divine, the teachers 
and preachers of the Gospel in assembly at West¬ 
minster beheld the Holy Bible dedicated by “ the 
determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God.” 
Seeing the book in this exalted vision, they were 
delivered from the pettishness of matching jots 
and tittles between this verse here and another 
verse there, and were enabled to dwell with a broad 
admiration, critical in the highest and best sense, 
on the lofty merits that have invested the Bible 
with a universal reputation of divinity. In all the 
literature of classic English there is no finer para¬ 
graph of prose than that in which the Westminster 
creed-makers undertook to enumerate the fine gold 
and jewels of God’s wealth displayed in His one 
royal book: 

“ The heavenliness of the matter, the efficacy of 
the doctrine, the majesty of the style, the consent 
of all the parts, the scope of the whole (which is to 
give all glory to God), the full discovery it makes of 
the only way of man’s salvation, the many other in¬ 
comparable excellencies, and the entire perfection 
thereof, are arguments whereby it doth abundantly 
evidence itself to be the word of God.” 


148 LIBERALISM WITHIN ORTHODOXY 


“ Doth abundantly evidence itself ”—of a truth 
indeed! What more need be said to make mani¬ 
fest the Bible’s supreme value for “ faith and 
life ” ? Would the Westminster clergy have added 
aught to their argument in behalf of its “ incom¬ 
parable excellencies ” if this recital of theirs had 
been climaxed with the claim that the book con¬ 
tains a mathematically exact record of the great 
ages reached by antediluvian patriarchs? They 
could no doubt have made that statement unqual¬ 
ifiedly; in their time any Christian would have 
quoted the figures of Genesis for the longevity of 
Adam, Methuselah and Noah without a quaver of 
question. As their own fourth chapter shows, 
these great ecclesiastics took the creation of world, 
sun, moon and man to have been accomplished in 
the six days of a single mundane week. It was then 
no inroad of agnosticism which prompted them to 
omit inerrancy from their tribute to the perfection 
of Holy Scripture. They omitted it rather because 
it lay so far below the plane of their nobler out¬ 
look on the grandeur of God’s revelation. They 
omitted it for the same reason that men desert low 
and shifty seasands for the surety and solidity of 
the lifting rock; they knew a higher and safer 
place to stand. 

Had therefore these men lived until humanity 
learned that the earth was not created before the 
sun, moon and stars which enlighten it; that the 
making of the universe was the process of an aeon 
rather than of a week; that the antiquity of man¬ 
kind cannot be calculated by adding up the “ gene- 


LIBERALISM WITHIN ORTHODOXY 149 


rations ” of Genesis, they would have been in no 
wise shaken in their esteem of the Bible, for they 
would have perceived that in these extensions of 
scientific knowledge nothing had developed to alter 
in the slightest the worth of the book as “ the rule 
of faith and life.” 

What had changed was the understanding of 
men concerning the material surroundings in 
which they dwelt, of which things the Creator had 
never engaged to make greater or more hasty reve¬ 
lation than their own diligence of inquiry might 
lead them to. Revelation in its Biblical quality, 
pertaining to the spiritual duties and spiritual 
hopes of the sons of God, stood high above all 
scientific fluctuations and not within touch of the 
tides of Ptolemaic or Copernican opinion, whether 
they ebbed or flowed. It affected neither saving 
grace nor saved life for a man to suppose that the 
sun revolved about the earth or to know that the 
earth revolves around the sun. 

In the light of this excellent common sense— 
and just as excellent religious apprehension—the 
members of the assembly at Westminster stood 
clear of all fears of conflict between science and 
religion. It was only a later and more timorous 
school of Protestants who, thinking the Bible to 
need more defense than its Author had thrown 
around it, invented the superfluous requirement 
that a book inspired for “ faith and life ” must be 
also miraculously authoritative on causes, circum¬ 
stances and consequences in nature. Such teach¬ 
ers had the sad reward of their undue industry 


150 LIBERALISM WITHIN ORTHODOXY 


when their theory—not anything that God had said 
in the Bible—compelled them in the middle of the 
nineteenth century to tell the youth of that time 
that they must reject the evidences of the then 
rising science of geology in respect to the age of 
the earth, or else cease to be Christian believers. 
Only God knows how many souls that folly ruined. 
And only He can tell what damage was done to 
the spirituality of America when in the end of the 
century church leaders well-nigh abandoned the 
evangelistic ministry of the Gospel to battle for 
the defense of a dogma respecting “ original auto¬ 
graphs ” which was equally worthless to nurture 
faith upon or guide life by. 

We have not yet, however, indicated the most 
admirable height to which the Westminster as¬ 
sembly attained in its view of Holy Scripture. It 
was on its way to that height when it recognized 
the fact, which these studies have already sought 
to make clear, that the truth of Scripture is heard 
not in the single voice of any isolated passage but 
in the harmony and balance secured by the com¬ 
position of many voices into one revelation. The 
writers of the Confession took special pains to 
stress this. Their paragraph on this point is lucid 
and unmistakable: 

“ The infallible rule of interpretation of Scripture 
is the Scripture itself; and therefore, when there is 
a question about the full and true sense of any Scrip¬ 
ture (which is not manifold but one), it may be 
searched and known by other places that speak more 
clearly. ,, 


LIBERALISM WITHIN ORTHODOXY 151 


One might wish to stop a moment to study the 
authors’ use of the word “ infallible ” in this con¬ 
nection, where it occurs apart from that technical 
association which customarily attaches it to the 
thought of inspiration. Here it is plain that the 
makers of the Confession do not intend to say 
that the comparison of Scripture with Scripture 
always results in a conclusion free from the liabili¬ 
ties of human misunderstanding. But they do 
mean to say that when any Scriptural matter is 
obscure and perplexing, this is the right road by 
which to proceed to its clearing up. Not every 
inquirer who takes this path, indeed, may reach 
the goal of the perfect truth, but infallibly each 
step in this direction brings him nearer. It is the 
always unmistaken method. And that justifies the 
adjective “ infallible.” 

This, however, is but incidental. The outstand¬ 
ing impression of the paragraph is its clear appre¬ 
ciation that the Bible is not to be judged or to be 
used piecemeal. The Bible derives its authority 
from, and accomplishes its service to mankind 
through, the “ consent of all the parts ” into which 
its elements have been worked by the divine Hand. 
The volume entire is the inspired unit, authenti¬ 
cated with the divine signature underwriting a 
completed divine design. 

The culminating peak of the chapter follows— 
its last paragraph: 

“ The Supreme Judge, by which all controversies 
of religion are to be determined, and all decrees of 


152 LIBERALISM WITHIN ORTHODOXY 


councils, opinions of ancient writers, doctrines of 
men and private spirits, are to be examined, and in 
whose sentence we can rest, can be no other but 
the Holy Spirit speaking in the Scripture.” 

Of these potent words the significance is still 
more manifest when—adapting to their own utter¬ 
ances the procedure which these famous theolo¬ 
gians recommend for the Bible—we bring into 
comparison the concluding sentence of their fifth 
paragraph: 

“ Our full persuasion and assurance of the in¬ 
fallible truth and divine authority [of the word of 
God] is from the inward work of the Holy Spirit 
bearing witness by and with the word in our hearts/’ 

Here we find these early Puritan thinkers boldly 
adventuring what most of their successors since 
have been too timid to risk—staking the potency 
of inspired Scripture on the response of Christian 
experience. Against the hazard of this many a 
nervous champion of religion has protested pas¬ 
sionately. “ What a catastrophe would befall the 
world,” such a one will cry, “ if the experience of 
men should turn against the Bible—if men should 
suddenly say the book does not impress them as 
having anything heavenly about it and cast it out 
as worthless!” Popular opinion on any subject 
is fickle, we are reminded, and who knows what 
day the Bible might be found stripped bare of the 
favour with which it is now a common fashion to 
speak of it? And indeed, if there were nothing to 
take account of but a handful of pages of black- 


LIBERALISM WITHIN ORTHODOXY 153 


and-white reading matter on the one hand and a 
protean crowd psychology on the other, it would 
be a precarious business to leave the treasures of 
divine revelation to be certified by the appreciation 
of an inconstant world. But the men who wrote 
this now venerable creed were not limited in their 
calculations to such fluctuating factors. They put 
faith in certain vast fixities. 

They believed in God, who made the book; in 
the human soul, for which the book was made; in 
the Holy Spirit, to whose directing use the book 
was committed; in Jesus Christ, the all-command¬ 
ing Figure on whom the illumination of the book 
is focused. Here are changeless quantities which 
the drift of time cannot remove nor currents and 
counter currents of popular whimsy wash away. 
A century since, a century hence and to-day the 
need of human nature for forgiveness and the urge 
of human conscience toward a life more fit in 
righteousness remain as through immemorial time. 
And God, who “ himself knows what is in man,” 
has presciently calculated the Holy Scripture to 
meet that continuing need, that abiding urge. 

Moreover, the Bible does not do its work alone; 
by the Spirit who lives in and labours through its 
messages it is applied not in general to the mass 
of mankind but in selective measure, as individual 
susceptibility allows or individual guidance may 
require, to one man and another according to the 
appropriate portion of each. This is bold faith 
indeed, but no evangelical orthodoxy ever said less. 
How, indeed, could a spiritually minded teacher 


154 LIBEBALISM WITHIN OBTHODOXY 


affirm anything effective of Bible inspiration if 
he hesitated to affirm that the Spirit who imparted 
inspiring wisdom to the writers of it imparts en¬ 
lightened understanding to the readers of it? Cer¬ 
tainly there was no such hesitation in the West¬ 
minster assembly. 

Why then should any one who accepts at all the 
postulates of revelation think it a tottering foun¬ 
dation to put beneath the permanent influence of 
Scripture when it is said to rest on the obedient 
belief it secures from successive generations of 
humanity? Has that belief or that obedience ever 
failed in any age since the Bible came to be? It 
has not. Nor will it until there comes a genera¬ 
tion of men who have none of the spiritual long¬ 
ings which the God of the Bible put in them and 
which He gave them the Bible to satisfy; who 
have none of the sins from which Jesus Christ 
came to redeem them; who have totally shut out 
the infinite Spirit from access to their intelligence, 
their emotion and their will. Till then the certif¬ 
icate going before every other credential of Scrip¬ 
ture will be the testimony which Coleridge voiced 
for millions: 

“ In the Bible there is more that finds me than I 
have experienced in all other books put together; the 
words of the Bible find me at greater depths of my 
being; and whatever finds me brings with it an ir¬ 
resistible evidence of its having proceeded from the 
Holy Spirit.” 

Yes, “ the Spirit speaking in the Scripture ” is 


LIBERALISM WITHIN ORTHODOXY 155 


" the supreme judge ” of the actuality of inspired 
revelation. And His verdicts are rendered not 
through “ decrees of councils, opinions of ancient 
writers/' or “ doctrines of men,” but through the 
Spirit’s “ inward work, bearing witness with and 
by the word in our own hearts.” In the inward 
life of private Christians—their daily audience in 
the secret place with their Lord—is the decision 
on the issues of life which constitutes the answer 
of the living Church to every problem of faith. 

The conjoint judgments of the brethren registered 
in assemblies and councils and conferences stand 
in all proper dignity on the records of a fraternal 
Christendom. But every such corporate deliver¬ 
ance must go for naught unless it is ratified in the 
consciousness of private disciples who read the 
Bible and pray over it at their own hearthstones. 
The great convocations of the Church may pro¬ 
claim what they will to be the truth of God, but 
none will believe it in the end because it is so pro¬ 
claimed. It will be believed, if at all, because the 
Spirit says it is true when each individual man 
opens the Scriptures and reverently asks for light. 

Thus is fulfilled what the Saviour spoke just 
before He went to His cross; “When he, the 
Spirit of truth, is come, he shall guide you into all 
the truth; for he shall not speak of himself, but 
what things soever he shall hear, these shall he 
speak, and he shall declare unto you the things that 
are to come.” This final phrase has been gravely 
misconstrued by those who have thought it to 
promise for the Church a power to foresee and 


156 LIBERALISM WITHIN ORTHODOXY 


foretell happenings buried in the contingencies of 
the future. It, of course, means not that at all—as 
the context shows. But it is a very precious re¬ 
assurance that no Christian who prays for it un¬ 
selfishly shall ever be left in want of that divine 
counsel which is ever waiting to apply anew to the 
problems of each new age the lasting principles 
made known in the written Scriptures. And it is 
not another Spirit, but the same Spirit of truth 
who inspired the Bible who is now with us to in¬ 
terpret it freshly for every freshly given day of 
opportunity and obligation. 

It will, of course, be objected that this way of 
claiming the present aid of the one Spirit of in¬ 
spiration amounts to asserting that additions to 
the Bible or new utterances as valuable as the 
Bible might still be produced to-day. And so no 
doubt there could be, did God so design it. But 
the “ providence of the canon ” was a providence 
of specific intent accomplished in specific time. 
Being accomplished according to God’s plan for 
creating a perpetual book of standard reference 
on religion, the making of Scripture is done and 
ended. 

The Bible, in an earlier stage of these studies, 
has been compared to a course of education for 
mankind. No course of education aims to teach 
the student all that he can learn in the world; it 
only aims to afford him a conspectus of truth with 
which all that he discovers of truth in later life 
shall be accordant. The graduate of any school 
goes out to learn other things than his teachers 


LIBERALISM WITHIN ORTHODOXY 157 


told him. But if he has been well taught, he will 
learn nothing contradictory of what they told him. 
So the Spirit of truth instructs the Church of to¬ 
day and of all days in many new ways of think¬ 
ing, serving and giving glory to God. But let no 
man dread the appearance of “ another Gospel.’’ 
The new unfolding will but confirm the old re¬ 
vealing. There is no contradiction in truth—only 
ratification by fresh application. The Bible will 
not be supplemented—still less superseded. It 
will simply grow in glory as clearer apprehensions 
reflect its divine knowledge along an ever widen¬ 
ing arc of the interests of mankind. And ever it 
will be the abundant text-book of the Spirit’s 
school for souls. 

Evangelical churches all require of those who 
are set in official responsibility for teaching and 
government in religion some form expressing their 
confessed acceptance of the Bible. The Presby¬ 
terian formula is typical—a question propounded 
as follows: “ Do you believe the Scriptures of the 
Old and New Testaments to be the word of God, 
the only infallible rule of faith and practice?” 
Will any Christian refuse to say “ Yes ” hap¬ 
pily and boldly whose soul has been “ found ” deep 
down by the great things of the book? 

A “ rule of faith and practice ”—that indubi¬ 
tably he needs along the winding, briar-hedged 
pathways by which he is bound to journey through 
this perplexing world; a rule to tell how to go and 
what to hope for and Whom to trust. And the 
“only rule”—surely that also; for there is no 


158 LIBERALISM WITHIN ORTHODOXY 


other to compare with this. An experienced 
traveller would as soon trade a compass for a 
wooden stick as this book for any other guide that 
men have ever tried to follow. More than that, 
“ the only infallible rule ”—what’s to deny there? 
Did any man ever miss light or wreck life who 
humbly took the Bible determined to follow it 
wherever it directed him ? Has it ever been to any 
man a cheating book, a wrong-leading book? No, 
“ infallible ” is a strong word, but not too strong 
for this book that has stood all tests through all 
the Christian centuries and is relied on to-day by 
greater throngs than in any prior day of time who 
have found it sincere, verifiable, alight with truth. 

And the “ word of God ”—to that the living 
Spirit ever bears the witness of power that goes 
forth from it to the redeemed in all climes and 
nations. 

With joy, out of experience in which he humbly 
trusts himself to have been instructed by the Spirit, 
the present writer subscribes anew this time-hon¬ 
oured formula: 

“ I believe the Scriptures of the Old and New 
Testament to be the word of God, the only in¬ 
fallible rule of faith and practice.” 



Appendix 

WESTMINSTER CONFESSION OF FAITH 

Chapter I—“ Of the Holy Scripture ” 

I. Although the light of nature, and the works of creation 
and providence, do so far manifest the goodness, wisdom, and power 
of God, as to leave men inexcusable; yet they are not sufficient to 
give that knowledge of God and of His will, which is necessary unto 
salvation; therefore it pleased the Lord, at sundry times, and in 
divers manners, to reveal Himself, and to declare that His will unto 
His Church; and afterwards, for the better preserving and propagat¬ 
ing of the truth, and for the more sure establishment and comfort of 
the Church against the corruption of the flesh, and the malice of 
Satan and of the world, to commit the same wholly unto writing; 
which maketh the Holy Scripture to be most necessary; those for¬ 
mer ways of God’s revealing His will unto His people being now 
ceased. 

II. Under the name of Holy Scripture, or the Word of God 
written, are now contained all the books of the Old and New Testa¬ 
ment, which are these: 

(Here follow the names of the books of the Bible as contained 
in the King James Version.) 

All which are given by inspiration of God, to be the rule of faith 
and life. 

III. The books commonly called Apocrypha, not being of divine 
inspiration, are no part of the canon of the Scripture; and there¬ 
fore are of no authority in the Church of God, nor to be any other¬ 
wise approved, or made use of, than other human writings. 

IV. The authority of the Holy Scripture, for which it ought to 
be believed and obeyed, dependeth not upon the testimony of any 
man or church, but wholly upon God (who is truth itself), the 
author thereof; and therefore it is to be received, because it is the 
Word of God. 

V. We may be moved and induced by the testimony of the 
Church to an high and reverent esteem of the Holy Scripture; and 
the heavenliness of the matter, the efficacy of the doctrine, the 
majesty of the style, the consent of all the parts, the scope of the 
whole (which is to give all glory to God), the full discovery it 
makes of the only way of man’s salvation, the many other incom¬ 
parable excellencies, and the entire perfection thereof, are arguments 
whereby it doth abundantly evidence itself to be the Word of God; 
yet, notwithstanding, our full persuasion and assurance of the in- 

159 


160 


APPENDIX 


fallible truth, and divine authority thereof, is from the inward work 
of the Holy Spirit, bearing witness by and with the Word in our 
hearts. 

VI. The whole counsel of God, concerning all things necessary 
for His own glory, man’s salvation, faith, and life, is either expressly 
set down in Scripture, or by good and necessary consequence may 
be deduced from Scripture; unto which nothing at any time is to be 
added, whether by new revelations of the Spirit or traditions of 
men. Nevertheless we acknowledge the inward illumination of the 
Spirit of God to be necessary for the saving understanding of such 
things as are revealed in the Word; and there are some circum¬ 
stances concerning the worship of God and government of the Church, 
common to human actions and societies, which are to be ordered by 
the light of nature and Christian prudence, according to the gen¬ 
eral rules of the Word, which are always to be observed. 

VII. All things in Scripture are not alike plain in themselves, nor 
alike clear unto all; yet those things which are necessary to be 
known, believed, and observed, for salvation, are so clearly pro¬ 
pounded and opened in some place of Scripture or other, that not 
only the learned, but the unlearned, in a due use of the ordinary 
means, may attain unto a sufficient understanding of them. 

VIII. The Old Testament in Hebrew (which was the native 
language of the people of God of old), and the New Testament in 
Greek (which at the time of the writing of it was most generally 
known to the nations), being immediately inspired by God, and by 
His singular care and providence kept pure in all ages, are therefore 
authentical; so as in all controversies of religion the Church is 
finally to appeal unto them. But because these original tongues are 
not known to all the people of God who have right unto and interest 
in the Scriptures, and are commanded, in the fear of God, to read 
and search them, therefore they are to be translated into the vulgar 
language of every nation unto which they come, that the Word of 
God dwelling plentifully in all, they may worship Him in an ac¬ 
ceptable manner, and, through patience and comfort of the Scrip¬ 
tures, may have hope. 

IX. The infallible rule of interpretation of Scripture is the 
Scripture itself; and therefore, when there is a question about the 
true and full sense of any Scripture (which is not manifold, but one), 
it may be searched and known by other places that speak more 
clearly. 

X. The Supreme Judge, by whom all controversies of religion 
are to be determined, and all decrees of councils, opinions of ancient 
writers, doctrines of men, and private spirits, are to be examined, and 
in whose sentence we are to rest, can be no other but the Holy 
Spirit speaking in the Scripture. 


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